HyperV 2022 replicate to HyperV 2019 Not Possible

[MONJEM]

Hello All,
Just fell into a bit of a Gotcha that I wasn’t aware, I have 4 Windows 2019 OS servers (Various HPs, DL380 G8, ML310 Gen8, etc all with various SAS Drives in RAID 10), 2 Production (Prod1 and Prod2), 2 On-Site DR with a 3rd 2019 Offsite DR server, managed to persuade bosses to invest in a new DL380 G10 with SSDs and 2022 OS (Prod3), built new server and migrated 2 of the Production HyperVs to new server (they start up so much quicker ), come to create a replication job from the new 2022 server to one of the old Production servers running 2019 and I get an error “The following hosts are incompatible with the target host Prod1 Hyper-V 2019 (1809)” with the Host details of “Prod3 – HyperV 2022 (21H2)” listed.

Now I could understand if I was trying to go back to Server 2012 (or later !!!) or even 2016, but for it not to be able to go back 1 version seems to be a little ridiculous, I am not too sure if Veeam is complaining that it is going back from OS 2022 to OS 2019 or if it’s the Hyper 2022 back to Hyper 2019 (if that makes sense) OR is it something Microsoft have done ? From what I can see there doesn’t seem to be that much difference of either the OS or HyperV between the 2 versions other than a few cosmetics and cloud management. Seems such a potential waste or is this just another MS way of getting more money ?

So any solutions other than upgrading all older servers to 2022 which might not be possible due to the age of some of the older hardware (and trying to get the budget) or do I need to look at another product, i.e. Altaro, Vembu, etc, or will this suffer with the same issue ?

Any help advice much appreciated.

[Gostev]

Hello!

Hyper-V 2019 simply does not "understand" Hyper-V 2022 VMs format because it did not exist back when Hyper-V 2019 was shipped. The other way around works fine however because newer Hyper-V versions support VMs with older versions.

This is no different than, for example, trying to import backups created by Veeam Backup & Replication V11 into some older Veeam version. The older Veeam version will refuse to accept them because it does not understand newer backups format created in future from its perspective. But then again, V11 can import backups from any earlier version,

Thanks!

[MONJEM]

Thank you Gostev for your reply, I understand what you are saying up I am sure that some clever people could write the code so that it is possible to be able to go back one version of something as not everyone can afford to suddenly upgrade all their servers to the same version just to accommodate something like this, maybe in the good ol' days of server 2000, 2003, 2008 & 2012 the knowledge/methods of writing code prevented this but today I think it could and should be possible to at least be able to go back one version, it's not as if I was wanting to go back to version 2012.

[kaffeine]

Hyper-V 2019 simply does not "understand" Hyper-V 2022 VMs format because it did not exist back when Hyper-V 2019 was shipped. The other way around works fine however because newer Hyper-V versions support VMs with older versions.

This is no different than, for example, trying to import backups created by Veeam Backup & Replication V11 into some older Veeam version. The older Veeam version will refuse to accept them because it does not understand newer backups format created in future from its perspective. But then again, V11 can import backups from any earlier version,

Does that restriction also applies to simple VM backup restores? For instance restoring backed up VMs from a Hyper-V 2022 server to a Hyper-V 2019 server?

[MONJEM]

OK so I have done some testing on this. I rebuilt one of the 2019 servers (HV-2) with 2022 so the same as my main HyperV server (HV-1), installed Veeam, etc, and have replicated all the Guests from HV-1 to HV-2, I then manually copied one of the guests from HV-2 to HV-3, a 2019 Server, imported the guest into HyperV and started it and it works, I therefore have to disagree with the comment "Hyper-V 2019 simply does not "understand" Hyper-V 2022 VMs format because it did not exist back when Hyper-V 2019 was shipped".

I know that I haven't used software to replicate the guest but the fact that a guest that was running on HyperV 2022 can be copied back to a HyperV 2019 and works makes me wonder why Veeam would stop this type of replication, as previously mentioned, I could understand it complaining about trying to go back to 2008, 2012 or 2016, Office programs can read in files created in newer/older versions within reason so I don't see why this should be an issue. Not too sure if this is Veeam or Microsoft dictating to Veeam to put this in so as to force people to upgrade their whole estates and make more money !!!

[Gostev]

Your test with two random VMs is hardly a comprehensive one. You would see a different result if you were to copy VMs with the configuration version higher than 9.0, as Hyper-V 2019 does not understand or support any of the new VM features brought by later VM configuration versions. You can find all combinations of host and VM versions which are officially supported by Microsoft in the table below. Thanks!

Supported VM configuration versions for long-term servicing hosts

Code: Select all

The following table lists the VM configuration versions for hosts running a long-term servicing version of Windows.

Hyper-V host Windows version	10.0	9.3	9.2	9.1	9.0	8.3	8.2	8.1	8.0	7.1	7.0	6.2	5.0
Windows Server 2022		✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✖	✖	✖	✖
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2021	✖	✖	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✖	✖	✖	✖
Windows Server 2019		✖	✖	✖	✖	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Windows 10 Enterprise LTSC 2019	✖	✖	✖	✖	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Windows Server 2016		✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Windows 10 Enterprise 2016 LTSB	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✔	✔	✔	✔	✔
Windows 10 Enterprise 2015 LTSB	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✔	✔
Windows Server 2012 R2		✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✔
Windows 8.1			✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✖	✔

[MONJEM]

I never said it was comprehensive testing, it was some testing, even so there is some cross over in the support matrix between 2019 and 2022 so surely within the coding of Veeam for it's replication section it could check to see what version it is and check to see if it is possible to run on the older target server which is the case with HyperV versions 8.0 through to version 9.0, so to give it a blanket No seems some what overkill and, as said previously, forcing companies to have to have to upgrade their servers all at the same time and at what could be a significant cost and could be avoided.

[Regnor]

From what I can see there doesn’t seem to be that much difference of either the OS or HyperV between the 2 versions other than a few cosmetics and cloud management. Seems such a potential waste or is this just another MS way of getting more money ?

Just an idea. If you don't need any features of Windows Server 2022, then why don't you deploy 2019 on your new host? They don't differ much from their lifecycle. And when 2019 goes EoL in 2027 you'll have to replace your hosts anyways.

[MONJEM]

Thanks Regnor, that thought did cross my mind but as the 2022 server is already up and running with production HyperVs on it, I decided to just go with rebuilding one of the old production servers to be the primary backup servers with 2022 when will look to use something like Syncrify to copy the HyperV from the primary backup to a second and third on site backup servers and then as time/finances allow I will look into rebuilding those with 2022, I have already upgraded the offsite DR server to 2022 last weekend and just in the process of replicating to this DR server.

[JSS]

Hello guys.
I found this thread because I'm having the same problem as OP and I would like to shed some light on this from my side of view.

I had 5 vm's running on WS2019, then I moved them (normal file copy across the servers) to my new WS2022 and tried to replicate them back with Veeam to WS2019, to no avail of course.
What is kinda interesting I can replicate them without any problems using native hyper-v replication as long as their's Configuration Version stays 9.0.

I understand all that was said on server versions differencies (2019 vs 2022), and I can agree with that but only when you already had created your machines on WS2022 with Configuration Versions 10.0 or you had them upgraded from 9.0 to 10.0.

If native hyper-v replication mechanism can do it, why Veeam cannot?

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

EDIT to reflect V12 news https://www.veeam.com/veeam_backup_12_0 ... new_wn.pdf

Compatibility checker enhancements — You can now restore and replicate VMs to Hyper-V hosts of lower versions compared to the original host as long as the VM hardware version is supported by the target host

Best regards,
Hannes

[HannesK]

just for information: my post above was updated to V12

[MONJEM]

Thank you HannesK for the update, fingers crossed that the V11 to V12 upgrades go smoothly