Moving VM between locations-> avoid full backup

[istoOi]

Hello,

i have a very big VM that moves a few times a year for a couple of days in a different location. Both locations are vmware enviroments with their own veeam backup infrastructure.
Of course, a backup is also needed in the temporary location. So in the past, every time the vm moved to another location, we had to made a full backup before continue with incremental backups. And the same procedure when the VM is back in the main location.

But as the VM grows, this becomes impractical and unreliable. The backup runs for one to two days and may or may not be successfull at the first try. Also two full backups on the backup target of the mail location takes a lot of space.

My question is, if there is a way to avoid full backups at least in the main location when the VM comes back. And maybe avoid it in the temporary location if we take a copy of the existing backup with it.

[haslund]

How do you currently move it between locations?
Did you consider using Veeams Quick Migrate feature?

[foggy]

Also, do these locations use different vCenter servers and what vSphere versions are they at?

[istoOi]

Both are individual and seperate vcenter enviroments. One 5.5, veeam 8 and the temporary location 6.0 wirh veeam 9

[namiko78]

I have the same issue when i move VM's to another vcenter server using Zerto. Support told me because the VM ID is changing, veeam will always see it as a new backup, but if the backup job is reverse incremental mode, it will not actually store the blocks on the file system, although the job will report that it has "transferred" them and will take awhile. Backup copy jobs always write the extra data to a VIB though, but should eliminate it when it comes time to merge.

[foggy]

Right, this is due to VM IDs change. The only way to preserve them is either using the same vCenter server or using cross-vCenter migration available in vSphere 6.0.

[haslund]

If you decide to use Cross-vCenter migrations, which seems to be a good use case for you, make sure you perform it from Veeam Backup & Replication console (ie. Quick Migrate) and not from the vSphere Web Client, otherwise Veeam will still consider this a different VM.

See https://helpcenter.veeam.com/backup/vsp ... n_job.html

[istoOi]

Thank you all for your help so far.
Unfortunately i can't use the same vCenter Server because of host limitation. Also cross-vCenter migration requiers me to upgrade from a standard to a enterprise plus lizense (according to the link rhaslund thankfully provided) which costs 3 to 4 times more (and i have no use for it most of the year).

Hmm. I thougt this is such a great problem, that there is already a "easy" solution. Even if its something like calculating the difference between a VM and backup data.

[haslund]

I don't remember any requirement to have Enterprise Plus to use Veeam Quick Migrate and Cross-vCenter vMotion.
Having reviewed the link provided, maybe I am blind but I just don't see it... can you reference the text passage and link to the page that says this is required?

[foggy]

To calculate the differences, reading the entire VM would still be required (like it's done in the same scenario with replication jobs).

[istoOi]

@rhaslund
you're right. I saw it in the vmware kb base -> https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micro ... Id=2106952

To enable migration across vCenter Server instances, your environment must meet these requirements:

The source and destination vCenter Server instances and ESXi hosts must be running version 6.0 or later.
The cross vCenter Server and long distance vMotion features require an Enterprise Plus license. For more information, see Compare vSphere Editions.