Upgrade path with new OS

[MaPf]

Hi Team.
My current setup is: Veeam B&R 9.5.4.2866 on Server 2012R2 with database on separate machine.
vSphere 6.7u3 with OnTAP 9.5P8 as underlying storage

I'd like to setup a new VM with Win Server 2019 while retaining hostname and IP address of the Veeam Server and install B&R v11

Can it be as simple as
- shutdown old OS
- Reset AD account
- install new OS, reuse the account and IP
- install Veeam 11
- Import the configuration backup, point to the existing database
- do some testing and be happy?

Is that supported?

Thanks
Markus

[wishr]

Hi Markus,

Yes, the plan looks valid. I would also keep the original server until the end of the whole process just to be sure that I have a rollback option, and disable the jobs before shutting down the server so no activities are going to be interrupted.

Thanks

[foggy]

Hi Markus, yes, the procedure looks good. If you point the new Veeam B&R installation to the existing db, you will keep all the settings. There's no need to import configuration prior to that, that would be an excessive step since the database already contains all the latest data.

[MaPf]

Thanks for your answers.
Just to be sure, there will be no issues when the v9.5 configuration will be imported in a v11 installation?

[wishr]

Yes, v11 allows restoring configuration backups created in 9.5U4b, but as Foggy mentioned above, this is not required unless you are also willing to migrate VBR Database.

Thanks

[MaPf]

Awesome, great service .. as always
Thanks again

[MaPf]

Hello Guys,

I just wanted to report back, that the upgrade is done.
I'd love to say, that all went smooth, but it didn't ...
Mostly I stick to the plan, pointed to the old database when installing Enterprise Manager, and d'oh ... MSSQL Express's 10GB limit stopped me. During the upgrade the DB is inflated by around 200%
Fortunately there were similar issues reported here in the forum and compressing the database helped here.

Another big issue is, thet somehow the saved credentials were messed up during upgrade. I noticed that the service account that connected to the vcenter was locked due to many failed login tries. I had to re-enter all credentials in tha Manager.

And finally ... the Guest Index files were missing and needed to be copied from the old server, for that I had to mount the VMDK into the new server

Apart from that the upgrade was successful

[foggy]

Glad it finally worked. The guest index is not stored in the database so this is expected. As for the credentials, those are stored in the database encrypted with the backup server machine-specific key. I should have mentioned that if you had restored the configuration from the encrypted backup, you wouldn't have had to re-enter credentials as they would have been decrypted upon configuration backup and stored there. Since you simply reconnected to the existing database, credentials had to be updated.