Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3 just released

[Gostev]

Yes, it will.

The reason is explained in my previous posts. Not only we plan to use this repository for more things than just EntraID, but we also plan to discontinue Microsoft SQL Server support down the road, as supporting two different database engine with varying capabilities is quite taxing on us. Given this direction, we decided to save R&D resource by not introduce 3rd party components setup complexity into backup console wizards.

[faisalmali]

Hello Community

Is there a step by step documentation of the upgrade process and do we need to upgrade the agents as well?

This is my first time upgrading and am afraid to get it wrong.

Thank you

[Gostev]

Yes, see the corresponding section in the Release Notes. Agents need to be upgraded too. You will find in-place Veeam upgrade to be very straight-forward, it's quite hard to get it wrong.

[Dima P.]

Faisal,

If you looking for a step by step instructions on how to initiate the upgrade for the managed agents via B&R console please take a look: Upgrading Veeam Agent > Upgrading from Veeam Backup & Replication Console. Thank you!

[chris.childerhose]

If you installed Veeam Backup & Replication using a local PostgreSQL instance, the Microsoft Entra ID backup repository uses the same PostgreSQL instance as the Veeam Backup & Replication configuration database. If you installed Veeam Backup & Replication using Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Entra ID backup repository uses a dedicated PostgreSQL instance that V12.3 setup will install on the backup server. Thanks!

So, yesterday's 12.3 upgrade was odd for me as I pointed it to my external Postgres server. When the installer started, it tried to install PG locally and then failed. On the next try pointing again to the external PG server, it worked fine and did not show the PG install step.

[m.novelli]

Yes, it will.

The reason is explained in my previous posts. Not only we plan to use this repository for more things than just EntraID, but we also plan to discontinue Microsoft SQL Server support down the road, as supporting two different database engine with varying capabilities is quite taxing on us. Given this direction, we decided to save R&D resource by not introduce 3rd party components setup complexity into backup console wizards.

Sad post

Marco

[SnakeSK]

Yes, it will.

The reason is explained in my previous posts. Not only we plan to use this repository for more things than just EntraID, but we also plan to discontinue Microsoft SQL Server support down the road, as supporting two different database engine with varying capabilities is quite taxing on us. Given this direction, we decided to save R&D resource by not introduce 3rd party components setup complexity into backup console wizards.

So please align this along with your other products, like Veeam One for example, which is stuck with MSSQL for nearly two years now. Because this exactly is the fragmentation you are causing and people are upset, if you would do simple cutover migration people would be more ok with it than having half of your product on MSSQL only, second in the middle with 2 databases support, and right now you added components which are exclusive to single database engine.

Thank you

[Gostev]

It may seem "stuck" because unlike with VBR, for Veeam ONE getting rid of Microsoft SQL Server is a multi-step process due to dependencies on Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, removing which is a very heavy lifting (rewriting hundreds of reports to a new framework is not a joke). However, once they are past that, they will be able to adopt PostgreSQL fairly quickly.

[pesos]

Worked with support. Looks like setup essentially completed but bailed right at the end and didn't start services. Manually started them. And then manually uninstalled postgres (honestly WHY is this installed SILENTLY on a box that is already using mssql). Also noticed a dozen or so plugins installed that are pointless in our environment - would be nice to be able to untick installation of those during setup so minimize security footprint risk.

[m.novelli]

It may seem "stuck" because unlike with VBR, for Veeam ONE getting rid of Microsoft SQL Server is a multi-step process due to dependencies on Microsoft SQL Reporting Services, removing which is a very heavy lifting (rewriting hundreds of reports to a new framework is not a joke). However, once they are past that, they will be able to adopt PostgreSQL fairly quickly.

What's the main reason behind moving from SQL Server to Postgres? SQL Express too much little, SQL Server Standard too much expensive?

Marco

[jm@rc]

Had the same issue.
I disabled Windows Defender antivirus temporarily and run the setup/upgrade a second time and it installed without any issue

I had to same issue and, instead of disabling Defender, I just put a temporary exception on "G:\Redistr\x64\PostgreSQL\15.10-1\postgresql-15.10-1-windows-x64.exe" where obviously G:\ was the ISO mounted path.

[Gostev]

What's the main reason behind moving from SQL Server to Postgres? SQL Express too much little, SQL Server Standard too much expensive?

In no particular order, just all things from the top of my head.
1. Too many support issues with customers running out 10GB limit and/or suffering from its artificial performance limits. And obviously almost no one accepts "just upgrade to Standard" as a solution because no one had it randomly budgeted. While smallest customers don't want this expense in principle, ever.
2. My ultimate goal is appliance-like software experience where our customers don't think about database at all. Like you don't think about it using Google Chrome, which relies on SQLite database.
3. Backup server HA functionality of V13 is built around PostgreSQL exclusively, using its capabilities.
4. Even today, configuration database performance on PostgreSQL is already better than on SQL Server in many scenarios just because for the latter we're not able to use "latest and greatest" advanced SQL capabilities - we're forced to lowest common denominator capabilities of all SQL Server versions we support. And in fact, customers using those "proper" shared and managed by dba SQL servers are more likely to have it running some old version, because legacy LOB apps are often preventing its upgrade. I believe at some point it was recognized by Microsoft that SQL Server is one of the worst upgraded workloads of all their products.
5. PostgreSQL 17 is pretty revolutionary as it comes to performance... excited to ship V13 with it embedded!

[m.novelli]

Today I've installed my first VBR 12.3 with native Postgres , pretty smooth, except some editing of Postgres files to install also VBO 8.0

I hope you are going to update Postgres with every new Veeam update, having in mind that many VBR and VBO installations are shared on the same physical Server

Marco

[Origin 2000]

On my side at postgresql installation the installer fail... (MS SQL in backend)
and if I try to manually install pgsql with the installer shipped in the .iso file... it fails too (problem running post-install step "problem running post-install step database cluster initialization")

I was faced by the same error message. With some trial and error i found out it was triggered by a "VeryHighComplexPassword" thats was choosen by Mr. Customer. If a password tool generate a password it can contains some very nasty chars. The PGSQL Installer will not validate the input in a propper way.

This was 1y ago and with the PGSQL downloaded from the internet. But i assume same would be happens with the version which ships with Veeam.ISO.

Regards,
Joerg

[sdv]

1/ It will be a type of aux/caching repository for new workloads like Entra ID backups.
2/ Eventually yes. For example, Microsoft SQL Server will not be an option for V13 VBR on Linux.

SQL is also available on Linux .

I understand it might be time for a change and a new kid on the block due to the method of cloud data savings & the Veeam backend development focus (eventhough Entra backups are from Microsoft itself and Veeam is not supported the Microsoft SQL server backend... ?! ). However I did not see this one coming (say goodbye to SQL backend on the roadmap) and instead blindly expected Veeam to support two backend versions instead (postgres & sql) where customers will have two choices to fix the mentioned issues some customers have, e.g. 1 and 4 (also 3 depending on SQL AlwaysON?). While other customers do not have this issue at all using SQL server.

In no particular order, just all things from the top of my head.
1. Too many support issues with customers running out 10GB limit and/or suffering from its artificial performance limits. And obviously almost no one accepts "just upgrade to Standard" as a solution because no one had it randomly budgeted. While smallest customers don't want this expense in principle, ever.
2. My ultimate goal is appliance-like software experience where our customers don't think about database at all. Like you don't think about it using Google Chrome, which relies on SQLite database.
3. Backup server HA functionality of V13 is built around PostgreSQL exclusively, using its capabilities.
4. Even today, configuration database performance on PostgreSQL is already better than on SQL Server in many scenarios just because for the latter we're not able to use "latest and greatest" advanced SQL capabilities - we're forced to lowest common denominator capabilities of all SQL Server versions we support. And in fact, customers using those "proper" shared and managed by dba SQL servers are more likely to have it running some old version, because legacy LOB apps are often preventing its upgrade. I believe at some point it was recognized by Microsoft that SQL Server is one of the worst upgraded workloads of all their products.
5. PostgreSQL 17 is pretty revolutionary as it comes to performance... excited to ship V13 with it embedded!

I'm still flabbergasted that Veeam is not going tot continue their support on a SQL backend anymore in future versions.
Probably V14 - 2026, no more support on SQL backends...?

[Gostev]

We didn't make specific plans around discontinuation yet and it will not necessarily happen fast, however some new features will start requiring PostgreSQL, which will ultimately push more and more customers to migrate to it.

SQL AlwaysOn doesn't solve 3 as it is about backup server HA, not about configuration database HA.

[helpdeskvsg]

I've had the issue that the Veeam Backup Service didn't start at step 6 with error Failed to start service ‘VeeamBackupSvc'. Rebooted the server after which all Veeam services just started well? Created a ticket for this to be sure the setup finished doing all steps

[Gostev]

Starting this service is the last thing the setup program does. Likely it just timed out starting due to configuration database being too busy or unavailable at the moment. But nothing to worry about if the service has started following the reboot.

In general, minor Veeam upgrades are rarely problematic. 12.2 was very smooth and I can see over 11K live backup servers already reporting to be on 12.3... and this number is delayed by a few days because backup servers report only one per week.

[RGijsen]

Yeah, not thrilled about having software installed we don't need (yet) either. And that also goes for the integration plugins. In my book all software is simply an attack vector, so not having any that aren't required is certainly prefered. We actually use Standard licenses, so we can't even use most of the integrations.
I can't dig part of the reasoning, especially the part of 'we have to support the least capable version'. Why would that be? If the requirement for Veeam is SQL 2021 or something, than that's what it is, isn't it? The fact that some companies now run their VeeamDB on an ancient shared SQL cluster, shouldn't be a reason for Veeam not to keep supporting that? While I agree SQL isn't the best DB anymore (or maybe hasn't ever been), the way this goes now is not really how I'd have liked it.

[lando_uk]

If Veeam eventually goes PostgreSQL only, you might as well also ditch Windows and just go down the physical Linux appliance route. But that would be a dark day for end user. One of Veeams greatest strengths is that it works on any old x86 server with a bunch of disks.

[Gostev]

These approaches are not somehow mutually exclusive though. Veeam has always been about flexibility and I consider it my job to carry this spirit further!

[jasonede]

From our perspective a version of VBR that fully runs on Linux would be good to have. Ideally distributed via a repo so that updating was dnf/apt update.

[mcz]

there some voices that had some criticism about the mix between MSSQL and PGSQL, but I would like to say "thank you" to veeam the way they did it. Because if you have this clear cut where ALL the products and components switch from one database to the other, it surely causes some issues because of some bugs that would occur because the new database deployment justs wasn't that sophisticated as the old one.

So when veeam shipped the version where you could choose between the two systems I sticked to the existing MSSQL to then switch to PGSQL some months later with a migration that was purely planned for the DB migration. So if you had no bugs and issues before and had some after the migration, you clearly knew where it came from.

Doing such a migration step by step might be annoying here and there, but if something goes wrong, it does not mess up your whole stack of veeam products...

[mkretzer]

My main issue is that Veeam installs a component (postgres) which cannot be automatically patched at the moment. But from what i understand that will change.
I just wonder if Veeam security fixed will come more often then because of postgres security vulnerabilities or if we still have to patch manually in such situations.

[robnicholsonmalt]

The upgrade needs a surprising amount of free disk space. Trying to upgrade on my lab system at home which has a 100GB C: drive. The C: drive is on 500GB SSD drive but the rest is used for other purposes. I guess I'm going to have to resort to gparted as I don't have a partition app that runs on Windows Server

[Warning] Selected location does not meet recommended disk space requirements
Drive C: 43.13 GB required, 25.29 GB available.

Does it REALLY need 43.13GB for an upgrade?? I can understand a new install that amount as "C:\Program Files\Veeam" is 11.5GB, "C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL" is 2.6GB and "C:\ProgramData\Veeam" is 4.3GB. I might do a test install on a test VM first...

[Gostev]

@Egor Yakovlev do you know what's up with that? Seems strange indeed.

[robnicholsonmalt]

I've just done a test install and upgrade on a virtual machine. Free space started off at 30.04GB and I got the warning. I knocked up a bit of PowerShell to monitor free disk space during upgrade and it dropped to 26.42GB minimum and then finished at 28.46GB. So I suspect the warning is based upon a full install, not an upgrade. My upgrade needed 4GB free disk space during the upgrade and then used an additional 1.5GB for the new version.

But CAVEAT - this is a very minimal test and you take your own chances in ignoring the warning....

[Dima P.]

Hello Rob,

We will review the existing free space notification with the team to make sure it provides accurate estimates. Thank you for the detailed investigation!

[m.novelli]

Hello, is there any security updates included in v12.3 ? We should hurry to upgrade?

Marco

[Dima P.]

Hello Marco,

Please take a look: Vulnerabilities Resolved in Veeam Backup & Replication 12.3. Thank you!