In-Place Upgrade Windows Server OS to 2022 for VBR Management Server

[Marcus1414]

Currently I've a Windows Server 2019 VM installed as VBR Management server and also act as VMware Backup Proxy & Guest Interaction Proxy. My repository is pointed to another server installed with Ubuntu acting as hardened repository.

Now I would like to perform an in-place upgrade of the VBR Management server from 2019 to 2022. Is it safe for me to just run a last configuration backup to store on repository, take entire VM snapshot, then perform in-place upgrade to 2022? Anything else I need to reconfigure on Veeam portion after upgrading the OS?

[d.artzen]

Personally I am not a big fan of In-Place Upgrades of Windows Server OS in general and I would not recommend it. There is just too much that can break or make problems afterwards. I know that for example an Exchange Server does not survive such an upgrade, and I am unsure how a MS-SQL would take that.
My personal recommendation would be to take a configuration backup of the VBR, do a new install of Windows Server 2022 and VBR and restore that configuration. That would be the safest way in my opinion. Since you're talking about taking a snapshot, I would simply spin up a new VM for this.

[yathus]

Hello,

We are like Marcus with a Veeam 11 Server on Windows 2012 and we have to move (Windows 2012 is EOL soon)

Is it safe to install a new Windows 2022 server then install Veeam 12 and restore a Veeam 11 configuration ?
Or better to install Veeam 11 on Windows 2022, then restore configuration and finally upgrade to Veeam 12 ?

Thanks

[Mildur]

Hello guys

You can do both with Veeam.
But I also would prefer deploying a new windows server and import the configuration backup.

Is it safe to install a new Windows 2022 server then install Veeam 12 and restore a Veeam 11 configuration ?
Or better to install Veeam 11 on Windows 2022, then restore configuration and finally upgrade to Veeam 12 ?

You can restore a configuration backup from v11 only to a Veeam v12 server with Microsoft SQL server (MSSQL) as the configuration database server.
A new installation of v12 will only deploy a PostgreSQL server. So you would have to deploy your own MSSQL server and use that for the installation if you want to import a v11 configuration backup.
If you are not familiar with the installation and configuration of a MSSQL server, I recommend you to install Veeam v11a, import the configuration backup and then upgrade to v12.

Best,
Fabian

[d.artzen]

You can't use a configuration backup from v11 in v12. On a new installation, VBR no longer uses MS-SQL but PostgresSQL and the database of v11 is not compatible with that. So either you upgrade the existing VBR to v12 (if the old server still meets the requirements) and take a configuration backup to use with the new server or you can install v11 on the new server and then upgrade.

Edit: Fabian was faster than me.

[apolloxm]

will the new server need to use new name or can still use the old name?

[planb]

@apolloxm did you end up using the same name? Possibly planning to go from 2016 to 2022.

[planb]

Just to update I was able to successfully upgrade our Veeam server and proxy from 2016 to 2022. No backup errors.
VBR v12 build 12.1.1.56.

[Mildur]

Hi PlanB

Thank you for your feedback

Best,
Fabian

[chris.childerhose]

I have done in-place upgrades in my homelab and new servers with configuration restore. The new server and configuration restore take less time than an in-place upgrade, but both work and I had no issues with Veeam after either option.