06021853 Installation failure of V11 after uninstall of V12

[clabrown]

I'm evaluating Veeam BR for use with ESXi. Have been using just Windows Agent for backup and it is solid. So I installed V12, it took FOREVER! But it finally finished and ran ok, right up until I tried to add the ESXi 5.5 host. OOPs 12 only goes back to ESXi 6. Well no biggie I thought, just uninstall, and start over with Veeam BR 11. However that failed. Installation would not complete, and there was no usable error message / code. So I tried uninstalling all the items that were installed with V12 based on the install date in Windows Programs and Features. There sure was alot of stuff that Veeam 12 installed that it did not bother to remove when I uninstalled it. I uninstalled each item with the same date. Still no joy. Tried deleting obvious directories added with that installation ... again side note, the uninstall sure didn't do a very good job of removing the installation. So now I am waiting for a response from Veeam, but it's evaluation, not purchased so response time is only "best effort" and it's going on a week.

Whether installing 12 and trying to remove it has anything to do with 11 not installing is not by any means certain but seems like a place to start.

Do any of you have a helpful "clue bat" you could hit me with, maybe you've run into v11 install failures in similar circumstances and have a magic bullet I can use.

Thanks for your time.
Cla.

[Mildur]

Hi Cla

Welcome to the forum and thank you for the case number.

I can see that you have opened the case for the community edition, which indeed has only support on best-effort. If you are evaluating Veeam, I strongly recommend to register for a trial license. With the trial license, you will get guaranteed support within the 30 day trial program. Also a trial license will allow you to use all features (example: object storage integration, SureBackup). The community edition has some limitations. https://www.veeam.com/downloads.html


To come back to your question, I would uninstall any Veeam related component and remove anything from the registry. Then reboot the server and try the installation again.
If that's not working, you can deploy a fresh windows server and do the installation of Veeam v11.

Best,
Fabian

[clabrown]

Thanks for the reply. Since I uninstalled Veeam and everything that was installed the same day, I have to assume that I DID uninstall Veeam 12 and all it's related components. There is an older Veeam Windows Agent on that PC that is doing a local backup to a USB drive, which is why I didn't nuke the registry of all entries with Veeam in the name. Also I'm sure Veeam installs components like Postgres that probably creates Registry entries which don't have Veeam in the name. I don't suppose there's a list? Some software used to have a separate uninstall tool available from support for when the stock uninstall did not do a thorough enough job. Don't suppose you've got anything like that kicking around?

I don't have the option to deploy a fresh server to that site.

I suppose I may have to remove the old Windows agent from that machine, and try again, but of course that means that I would have to make sure to get the Agent reinstalled if the BR V11 install fails.

As a side note, what would you recommend for a minimum Win10 VM to run BR V11 (or V12) backing up to a local USB drive?

Thanks, Cla.

[Mildur]

Hi Cla

There is an older Veeam Windows Agent on that PC that is doing a local backup to a USB drive

I strongly recommend to run your evaluation on a new VM without any old software components. Old Veeam Agents may interfere with new versions of Veeam Backup & Replication.

Also I'm sure Veeam installs components like Postgres that probably creates Registry entries which don't have Veeam in the name.

PostgreSQL won't have an affect on Veeam V11. V11 didn't had PostGreSQL. You can ignore it.

Also I'm sure Veeam installs components like Postgres that probably creates Registry entries which don't have Veeam in the name. I don't suppose there's a list? Some software used to have a separate uninstall tool available from support for when the stock uninstall did not do a thorough enough job. Don't suppose you've got anything like that kicking around?

If there is a tool, our support will have access to it. I don't remember a KB article with all components.
You can start with uninstall everything with Veeam in it's name.

As a side note, what would you recommend for a minimum Win10 VM to run BR V11 (or V12) backing up to a local USB drive?

Please use new topics for new questions. I leave it here. But If you want to discuss it more, I will split it from this topic.
Technical supported Windows 10 versions are listed here:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... kup-server
Please check with Microsoft's EULA if you are allowed to run a windows 10 as a VM and as a "backup server".

Please note: We don't recommend running Veeam Backup & Replication on a windows client OS. For example, you won't be able to use FastClone enabled backup storage (xfs/reFS). FastClone enables you to create space less and fast full backups. One exception, it's possible with a windows pro for workstation license.
You should consider having a windows server VM or physical server and some proper storage for your primary backup jobs. For example, have a look at our hardened repository. It will provide you ransomware protection for your backups.
Consider restore testing with a USB Disk as backup storage. In case of a restore you want to be sure that you can restore. And also how long it takes to restore all of your VMs.

Best,
Fabian