Veeam 9.5 Hyperv 2016

[Iain_Green]

Hi,

Were running Veeam 9.5 with update 1
We backup several different Hyper V environments so our backup server has Microsoft system centre 2012 R2 installed.

We are creating a new 2016 environment and wish to use our Veeam server to backup the servers. However Veeam can't with out me updating to System centre 2016.

My question is, will I be able to still backup the environments that use 2012 if 2016 is installed?

Thanks

Iain

[Mike Resseler]

Hi Iain,

I am not sure if I understand the question. Will Veeam be able to backup an older Hyper-V environment and the latest 2016 environment? In that case the answer is yes

If that is not the question, sorry, can you give me some more information?

Thanks
Mike

[Iain_Green]

Excellent, that is all i needed. Just wanted to be sure I am safe upgrading to 2016 with out effecting the 2012 environments.

[nmdange]

If you are using an off-host proxy, you'll need a separate one running on WS2016 to backup the Hyper-V 2016 hosts.

[Mike Resseler]

Correct, and good point. But if your new environment is fully 2016, you can go with on-host today as there are no Hardware VSS providers for 2016 at this point in time (or not that I am aware off)

[Iain_Green]

If you are using an off-host proxy, you'll need a separate one running on WS2016 to backup the Hyper-V 2016 hosts.

If I was to us off host, are you saying the proxy would need to be running 2016 OS?

[Mike Resseler]

Correct, but in order to use an off-host proxy with 2016 you need to have a VSS hardware provider that supports transportable shadow copies on the off-host proxy and the Hyper-V host. So you would need to check with your hardware vendor first if it already exists for 2016

[Iain_Green]

OK thanks, a nugget to remember, as it is we will be using the hosts as proxies for this environment.

[Mike Resseler]

Ian,

Not sure if you already have built that environment but consider using ReFS (and those newer MSFT technologies) to store your VMs on. The snapshot (sorry checkpoint) commit is very fast and can make a big difference when working with backups!

[Iain_Green]

Are you talking about the Host running ReFS?

We are looking at all new Veeam servers running ReFS however existing servers can't be converted as we do not have the space to free repositories in order to format them.

[Mike Resseler]

I am talking about the location that will hold the VMs

[nmdange]

Correct, but in order to use an off-host proxy with 2016 you need to have a VSS hardware provider that supports transportable shadow copies on the off-host proxy and the Hyper-V host. So you would need to check with your hardware vendor first if it already exists for 2016

Unless you are using Scale-Out File Servers and presenting the storage over SMB

[Iain_Green]

Hi, so I upgraded VMM on our backup server and found that I could no longer connect to existing HYPERV enviroments, they would fail to invoke PowerShell query and Failed to determine SCVMM server versions.
Before I create a case, can I ask if anyone had any issues upgrading or know any reason why replacing the old VMM with the new one would cause these issues?

[nmdange]

When you say you upgraded VMM on the backup server, did you just upgrade the console? Is the actual VMM server itself on a different server? You need to upgrade the actual SCVMM host to SCVMM 2016. I did not have any issues with upgrading SCVMM.

[Iain_Green]

I only upgraded the VMM console as we have serveral 2012 r2 Hyperv environments connecting, we are now adding a new 2016 environment.
So as above I asked would I still be able to work with the 2012 r2 enviroments if I upgrade to the vmm console to 2016, to which I was told yes.. so far it appears I can't.

[nmdange]

You have to upgrade the VMM server itself to 2016, and it can continue managing Hyper-V hosts running 2012 R2 (and even older OS version as well)

[Mike Resseler]

nmdange is correct. You need to upgrade VMM to 2016 to be able to manage your hosts anyway so...

[Iain_Green]

So weed need all our customers who are running Hyperv to upgrade their VMM servers to 2016 before we can add a the 2016 VMM console.
That's not going to be simple task!

[Mike Resseler]

Well, if your customers have Hyper-V 2016 and they want to manage it with VMM they need SCVMM 2016 to do that

[Iain_Green]

No that's my point they are running 2012, we are adding a new 2016 environment. So in order to mange the new one we need the 2016 console on the B&R server, however when I do that the existing 2012 Hyperv environments start chucking out errors.

I have 3 customers running HyperV 2012 all added to to our B&R server.
We are adding a HyperV 2016 in order add that to the B&R server I need the 2016 console.

[Mike Resseler]

OK, now I start to understand. You have 3 (separate) environments who are still 2012 (or R2). Each of those environments have their own SCVMM 2012 (R2) server correct?

Now you are adding a 4th environment which is fully 2016 (and therefore the SCVMM is also 2016).

I'm afraid that (as far as I know) your scenario won't work. I think you would need to create a new B&R server to manage the 2016 and 2016 SCVMM and the old one to manager the 2012 VMM environment. (And then use EM to have a global view

Another option would be to manage the new 2016 environment without VMM (so only add the cluster) but that could mean that you are not using all the functionality with SCVMM.

Maybe someone else has better / different ideas but I think those are your options.

PS: Do you also have one OpsMgr environment for this? Because I think you will run into the same problem as you need to SCVMM console on the OpsMgr server

[Iain_Green]

PS: Do you also have one OpsMgr environment for this? Because I think you will run into the same problem as you need to SCVMM console on the OpsMgr server

Unsure, will speak to the engineer building the environment.

OK, now I start to understand. You have 3 (separate) environments who are still 2012 (or R2). Each of those environments have their own SCVMM 2012 (R2) server correct?

Now you are adding a 4th environment which is fully 2016 (and therefore the SCVMM is also 2016).

Apologies, yes you are correct.

Thanks for your time, I have also learnt I need to type out whats in my head to be clear! Rather than thinking people can decrypt my random typing!

[Mike Resseler]

No worries mate, this happens to all of us (and me in particular a lot...) Just ask my boss Gostev

[Iain_Green]

Another option would be to manage the new 2016 environment without VMM (so only add the cluster) but that could mean that you are not using all the functionality with SCVMM.

Where might i find documentation on features of adding in the Hyperv as a cluster or adding in VMM. Would like to know what we loose, as i may mean that we could just add it as a cluster.

[Mike Resseler]

Iain,

I don't have an environment with SCVMM at this moment but here are a few things:

1) When you add a SCVMM server, B&R will automatically talk to it and automatically get the cluster / hosts information and add those cluster(s) / hosts to B&R as managed servers. Losing this ability means that you need to add the cluster itself (when you have only 1 cluster or a few standalone hosts in those environments, the "effort" is almost the same)
2) When creating a job, you cannot choose from SCVMM objects, so you need to search your VM on the cluster or host. Again, if this is a one-cluster environment it kind of remains the same
3) When you restore, you won't be able to select SCVMM, but again, cluster or host as target host destination.

So in smaller environments you don't loose that much, but if your SCVMM contains multiple clusters, then you might search a bit longer to retrieve where the VM that you need is located

Hope I make sense
Mike

[Iain_Green]

OK brilliants, we have a work around. We will remove the Hyper V 2012 R2 SCVMM and re add as a cluster. backups are configured by adding individual VMs.
Will then be able to remove VMM 2012 console and install 2016 then add the Hyper V 2016 as SCVMM.

Thanks again.

[nmdange]

The primary advantage with SCVMM is Veeam is able to track VMs when they move between clusters. Without SCVMM, if a VM is moved from one cluster to another, Veeam sees it as a completely new VM and you have to add it back into your jobs, and then the VM would be stored twice in the backup files until the old copy was removed. If your customers only have a single cluster, then this would not really be an issue.

[jmmarton]

Plus SCVMM allows you to use tags to logically group VMs, and we can leverage SCVMM tags for VM selection in backup jobs.

Joe

[j.rev]

I know this is an old thread but I'm hoping to get some clarity as I recently took over our Veeam Environment. (Yeah Me!) I wanted to poll the crowd first before submitting a ticket.

We are currently running our Veeam B&R environment (9.5 Update 3a) on MS2012R2 but are in the process of converting our VMs/VHs over to MS2016. We also updated our SCOM and SCVMM to 2016 which has caused issues ("Failed to reconnect Powershell session.") I removed the old VMM2012 server from B&R then added the new VMM2016 then recreated all of the jobs for the VMs, but they are failing out with the above Powershell error message. Since we now have MS2016 in the mix, do we have/need to also move Veeam over to Server 2016 in order to manage those backups despite the fact we do have our SCVMM at 2016 (1801)?

Thanks in advance for the insight and I hope my description is clear.
~J

[Mike Resseler]

Hi Jennifer,

First: Welcome to the forums!

Did you install the VMM admin console (version 2016) on your backup server? That should fix the issue I believe. I think you still have the 2012 R2 version on your backup server from what you describe in your scenario.