Quick Migrate surprised me

[Moebius]

I recently had to use Quick Migration in a small infrastructure (3 hosts, 1 vcsa, no shared storage, VMware Essentials only).
The hosts are registered directly in Veeam B&R (the vcsa is not registered). There is a backup job that backs up all vms daily.

I quick-migrated several vms from one host-datastore to another. I was expecting that the following backup run would not find the moved vms giving an error, but to my surprise, Veeam continued to backup the vms from the new location without any need to edit the job.
I searched the docs and forum for this great feature but did not find any references. I assume that Quick Migration also updates the database so the jobs can find the vms even after they have been moved to another location within the same datacenter. A nice feature that is worth to be documented.

Another thing that puzzles me is that, editing the job to the Virtual Machines page and hovering the mouse over the moved vms, they still appear with the old path (old_ip_address\vm_name). Is this to be expected as well?

[Mildur]

Hi Lucio

Sounds unexpected. More likely the old VM was not removed and is backed up.
Does the original VM still exists in the old host? Have you selected to delete the source VM files in the quick migration wizard?

Update:
When we do a quick migration, we update the MoRef ID inside the veeam database with the new MoRef ID from the migrated vm.
It allows you to continue the same backup chain with incremental backups.
This happens for a quick migration or instant recovery with quick migration.

There is a limitation. VBR updates the database only under 1 condition.
There must be a heartbeat after the migration. For a heartbeat, VMware tools must be installed and the VM must be powered on.

If the VM was powered down before the migration, the migrated VM will not be powered on. No heartbeat, no database update.


If the VM was powered on before the migration, the migrated VM will be powered on. The database will be updated.:


Thanks
Fabian

[Andreas Neufert]

Do you had both VMs in the same vcenter and this vcenter added to Veeam?

[Moebius]

Hi Fabian,

no, the original VM does not exist anymore in the old host;
yes, I selected to delete the source VM files in the wizard.
And looking into the datastore, the VM files and folders have actually been deleted from the old location.
In the VCSA (which is not registered in Veeam) the source VMs have been renamed as "vmname_migrated" and are orphaned. I just removed them from the inventory.

Is this really unexpected? That would be the first case of a software that performs better than designed

[Moebius]

Do you had both VMs in the same vcenter and this vcenter added to Veeam?

All VMs are in the same vcenter, but no, the vcenter has not been added to Veeam.

[Andreas Neufert]

Can you check in the migration statistics (you can go to the history button at the bottom left of the menu) and check what migration method was used. Was VMware vMotion/Storage vMotion used?

[Moebius]

Andreas,
Cold migration for all VMs. Neither vMotion nor Storage vMotion are available. It's a VMware Essentials (only) infrastructure.

The migration statistics also say
"Removing source VM
Updating configuration database"
shortly before finishing up.

[Moebius]

You guys had me worried at this point.
I performed a guest file restore from a VM that was last backed up after the quick migration as a test and it was ok.
Again, what still puzzles me is seeing the VMs in their old location (where they are not anymore) when editing the job. This is kind of weird.
How can I look a little deeper into this?

[Andreas Neufert]

I would open a ticket and let support have a look at this.
It is maybe just a knowledge gap on our side.

[Moebius]

Will do, thank you.

[Mildur]

Hi Lucio

I have to check again and will run a test in my lab. I‘ll keep you updated.

Thanks
Fabian

[Mildur]

...Update needed...

[Moebius]

Hi Fabian,

thank you. Good job Veeam!
The only question I'm left with is - why I don't see the updated location of the migrated VMs when I edit my backup job?
Does this also happen to you?

[Mildur]

Hi Lucio

I have to check again.
Sorry for the confusion. It seems there are some requirements for this to work which I need to check.

Thanks
Fabian

[Mildur]

Hi Lucio

Again, what still puzzles me is seeing the VMs in their old location (where they are not anymore) when editing the job. This is kind of weird.

I have the same issue about the path in my backup job. It looks like it doesn't get updated.
I will open a case myself for that.
_________________________

My previous answer is correct:

When we do a quick migration, we update the MoRef ID inside the veeam database with the new MoRef ID from the migrated vm.
It allows you to continue the same backup chain with incremental backups.
This happens for a quick migration or instant recovery with quick migration.

There is a limitation. VBR updates the database only under 1 condition.
There must be a heartbeat after the migration. For a heartbeat, VMware tools must be installed and the VM must be powered on.

If the VM was powered down before the migration, the migrated VM will not be powered on. No heartbeat, no database update.


If the VM was powered on before the migration, the migrated VM will be powered on. The database will be updated:

_____________

Thanks
Fabian

[Moebius]

I have the same issue about the path in my backup job. It looks like it doesn't get updated.
I will open a case myself for that.

Hey Fabian, any outcome from the case you opened?

[Mildur]

Hi Lucio

We are still working on it. They will receive my database today.

Thanks
Fabian

[Mildur]

Hi Lucio

It's confirmed as a cosmetical bug and will be fixed in one of our next versions.
Thanks for letting us know about it.

Best
Fabian