EMC Data Domain DDOS 5.6

[Sederik]

Greetings!

We have a customer that is planning to upgrade his current backup infrastructure by implementing two new DD2500 appliances. These are currently installed with DDOS version 5.6.0.3. Is it safe to use this version with Veeam v.8.0.0.831 without having the devices downgraded to DDOS 5.5?

[PTide]

Hi and welcome to the community.

DDOS 5.6 support will be introduced in v9.

Btw, what's the reason for using .831 while .2084 is already available?

Thank you.

[rolandp]

Hi,

I'm in a similar situation.
We'd like to install DDOS 5.7 on out DD860 to get better multi-tenant reporting from the DD860. However, Veeam v9 only supports DDOS 5.6, so like the original poster asked, is it ok to use a more recent version of DDOS.

Clearly, Veeam won't take advantage of any new features in DDOS 5.7 but that's not what we're after. We just need to know that Veeam v9 will work using the features of DDOS 5.6 and won't have issues with DDOS 5.7.

Thanks,
Roland.

[rreed]

A word of caution on 5.7; we upgraded a set of ours to 5.7 that immediately broke domain authentication, causing several days' worth of back and forth w/ support to finally get it resolved. The support person indicated they had been inundated w/ support calls since rolling it and there were some other problems w/ 5.7 that we were lucky enough at least at the moment didn't seem to experience. Our domain authentication issue was itself a new bug they hadn't yet discovered, also according to our support person. It took some CLI forced resetting and AD synchronization ninjitsu to get it back online.

They also took away some handy features like the Enterprise Manager where you can see your other DD's. That's gone in 5.7. I asked about rolling back to 5.6 or whatever last version that retained it, they indicated it would take a tumb drive wipe/reload (which wipes your data) to freshly install an older version because DD's don't respond well to roll-backs, or simply won't at all. So we're stuck w/ a set of our DD's on 5.7. Luckily it's our oldest set that we're going to allow to expire and place them in lab or as internally unsupported storage.

If you look through versions of DDOS you can download, you'll see they have numerous releases that openly indicate you accept known issues they have. I don't know why they would knowingly release software w/ known issues but you're not obligated to download any of those that mention known issues. I think I last saw a 5.6.something that did not indicate any known issues, I've downloaded it and awaiting an available moment to upgrade some of my <5.6 DD's.

Best of luck w/ them. BTW, a simple reboot does not clear our certain things in memory on those things. If you run into trouble, have someone there to stab the power button after a system shutdown to bring it back up to clear everything out of memory.

[rolandp]

We don't use domain authentication on our DD's so that particular issue shouldn't be a problem.
We're currently on 5.5.0.9, to get multi-tenant support. However, the reporting is rubbish, so billing is 'interesting'. DDOS 5.7 includes reporting specifically for multi-tenant environments, so is kind of essential for us.
If upgrading DDOS to 5.7.x.x will break Veeam, then it's a non-starter, as successful backups/restores are more important than reporting.

[rreed]

We used 5.7 in both 8 and now migrating to 9 w/o any more issues than we've already had. Seems to work fine.

[foggy]

Roland, DDOS 5.7 is not officially supported by Veeam B&R and we haven't fully tested v9 against it, however, as far as I know, we have it deployed in our QC lab and so far haven't run into any issues as well.

[rolandp]

Hi Foggy,

That's good to hear. If we do install DDOS 5.7 are we going to have issues logging support requests, since it's not supported, if we run into problems?

Thanks,
Roland.

[PTide]

Hi

are we going to have issues logging support requests, since it's not supported, if we run into problems?

You won't have any issues with getting support, however we cannot guarantee that we will be able to resolve all the problems that might occur in cases when the failures will be caused specifically due to a change or an issue specific to DDOS 5.7.

Thank you.

[cfrantsen]

If you want support from both Veeam and EMC it looks like that's going to take a while, we got the following reply from EMC support when asking about Veeam 9 support. Since we are quite strict here when it comes to support/certification from all involved parties i guess we have to stay on Veeam 8 + DDOS 5.5 for quite a while longer before using all the great features of Veeam 9, bummer...

I checked with engineering on this. Engineering is testing Veeam 8 with DDOS 5.6/5.7 and should be done by Q2 of 2016. Veeam 9 + DDOS 5.7 in Q3 of 1016. Until then, as you correctly noted, DDOS 5.5 is latest supported version. Monitor support.emc.com and look for updates to this guide - https://support.emc.com/docu59113_Data_ ... uage=en_US

Yes Veeam 9 is planned to be supported in 5.5 and 5.6. But I would wait for Compatibility Guide to make sure, or else you will be using unsupported configuration.

[rreed]

I suddenly remembered this morning, if you haven't installed 5.7 yet, one of the first bugs you'll run into if they haven't yet fixed it in whatever release you run, the built-in /backup volume/share is broken. You'll need to do a Fastcopy of it to another folder name you create if you have existing data in it, then setup a new share for it. The built-in backup folder will flash back and forth you have rights/you don't have rights to it, it's there/it's not there, etc. Regarding the Fastcopy of /backup to another local folder, I don't recall if it leaves that original data - doubling your consumption. I haven't been able to go back into that folder to clean it out since it's broken.

I'm curious about your multi-tenant support and reporting. Are you setting up different folder/shares for each user? I'd have to look at one of our older version boxes but I'm pretty sure even older versions have built-in reporting/graphs/usage/etc. for each folder/share.

[rolandp]

I think, after reading these comments, that we will stick with DDOS 5.5.2.2 for the time being and wait for Veeam support later this year.

As far as the reporting for multi-tenant environment is concerned, currently (DDOS 5.5 and 5.6) the reporting shows how much space is used on the DD after de-dupe has been done, not how much data has been backed up. Or it might be the other way around (I can't remember which without going and checking), while DDOS 5.7 shows both the before de-dupe and the after de-dupe values.

[SE-1]

We have currently a DD160 running with DDOS 5.7.0.3 without any issues.

This already with version 8.0, recently we did an upgrade to VEEAM9 and works also without any issue.

We also have a multi tenant environment on a DD2500 that we would like to upgrade to 5.7 for the calculation of physical space used.

Veeam 9 has DDBOOST plugin version 3.0.2.0 (version DLL in C:\Program Files (x86)\Veeam\Backup Transport\x64\ddboost)

According to the EMC DDBOOST compatiblity guide, Veeam 8 had version 2.6.3 and supported DDOS 5.4 & 5.5

Also we intent to achieve a new DD with DS60 shelves, which are only compatible with DDOS 5.7.

Official support for DDOS 5.7 does that mean that Veeam needs to update the DDBOOST dll to 3.1 or higher or is it just waiting to compatiblity list?

[foggy]

Official support for DDOS 5.7 does that mean that Veeam needs to update the DDBOOST dll to 3.1 or higher or is it just waiting to compatiblity list?

To provide DD Boost Integration with DD OS 5.7, Veeam B&R needs to be updated for using DD Boost 3.1.

[SE-1]

Will that be included in Veeam 9 patch 1 or U1?

[foggy]

No, this update will not contain support for DD Boost 3.1.

[SE-1]

any idea when DD BOOST 3.1 will be supported?
having DDOS 5.7 would make our live much easier regarding charge back

thx

[foggy]

Dirk, support for DDOS 5.7/DD BOOST 3.1 is planned for the next version.

[sfbi]

Hello!

I'm testing Veeam B&R 8 and 9 with EMC Data Domain (DDVE) version 5.7 and DD Boost protocol

With Veeam 8 I can connect DD Repository but Veeam can't write (Err: 5057 during backup),
but with Veeam 9 the job end without any problem....

It's only a first test, but with a good result!

Bye!

[foggy]

Just to make sure you're aware of that (in case of any future issues), DDOS 5.7 is not officially supported by Veeam B&R v9.

[rolandp]

To provide DD Boost Integration with DD OS 5.7, Veeam B&R needs to be updated for using DD Boost 3.1.

Why does Veeam need to update to DD Boost 3.1 just to be certified for use with DD OS 5.7? Surely Veeam can continue with DD Boost 3.0 and only offer the features of that version and NOT the additional features of DD Boost 3.1.

[Gostev]

Officially, DDBoost 3.0 only supports DD OS 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6

[sfbi]

Hello Gostev,
the first version of EMC Data Domain Virtual Edition (DD VE) start from version 5.7.
About my test Veeam 9+DD Boost work very well with DD VE.

Well, is EMC DD VE supporter or it will be "official supported"?

Thanks

[foggy]

As stated above, current Veeam B&R version does not officially support DDOS 5.7, be it either physical or virtual (though it might work at least for basic scenarios, as others state in this thread above).

As far as I know, DD VE is currently in a tech preview stage and we yet to get our hands on it. Chances are, it will be supported along with the physical storage running DDOS 5.7 when our support for it is out.

[foggy]

After successfully running EMC certification tests against DDOS 5.7, Veeam B&R v9 is listed as compatible with this version: http://compatibilityguide.emc.com:8080/ ... nBoost.jsp