Postgres (pgsql) is installed with 12.3 if it's not present as the new Entra ID backup utilizes pgsql to store the backups. If you are not planning to protect Entra ID content, you can remove Postgres and continue with MSSQL.
David Domask | Product Management: Principal Analyst
Will Entra ID Backup use MS SQL in the future or are there no plans to implement that? We run MS SQL farm so seems mental having to replace Veeam BnR due to no MS SQL support. M365 has to go when the current licence expires, just wondering if I need to start looking for a Veeam BnR replacement as well.
In the long term (some years) the plan is to remove Microsoft SQL Server support completely, and use PostgreSQL exclusively. PostgreSQL will also be fully managed by Veeam going forward, so you will not have to worry about its presence - just like you don't think or even know about any other of many 3rd party components Veeam Backup & Replication relies upon. Or like you don't worry about SQLite database used by Google Chrome and not thinking of redirecting one to run on your SQL Server farm... you just consume the product.
We have the same issue/policy as the topicstarter.
So the recommendation is to deinstall PostgreSQL after upgrading to Veeam VBR 12.3? Why is it not an option to prevent installation of PostgreSQL in the installer?
Both of these questions have already been answered in the very first reply.
Understandably we will never have an option not to install the default and recommended configuration database directly in the setup, however I believe silent install process does offer such parameter.
Overall however PostgreSQL is the future for Veeam Backup & Replication, so please consider migrating to it soon instead of deinstalling and continuing with Microsoft SQL Server.
We are long time user of Veeam (starting out with Veeam 6 or so?) and thus have always used MS SQL, more specifically: a dedicated remote MS SQL setup. When upgrading from 11 to 12 we continued to use MS SQL thus we have no PostgreSQL installed. Now when upgrading from 12.2 to 12.3 we still pointed the installer to our MS SQL setup but next to that we suddenly get a local PostgreSQL install. As I understand this is specifically for MS Entra ID. As Veeam considers PostgreSQL the way forward there is no option to use MS Entra ID with MS SQL. So this approach is steering us/everybody to move away from MS SQL I guess.
Yep, totally correct. And it's not just Entra ID, other future capabilities like VBR software appliance and VBR high availability in V13 will also only support PostgreSQL. Having said that, we do not yet have a specific planned date of Microsoft SQL Server support discontinuation, so there's no rush to migrate if you prefer to stay on one for now. We will monitor support big data and decide when is the right time based on its actual usage and trends.
OK does that mean VBR Server HA in V13 is using native PG replication? My hope was it works on the application layer and we can have one VBR node on MSSQL and one on PG so we also have a near downtime-free migration path.
Regardless of the configuration database type, native database replication alone can never be used to deliver VBR HA because no encrypted secrets are usable outside of the backup server that created them.
As a user you always want to use the database that is installed by default, because default means the majority of Veeam QA labs would also be running one and have been running for almost 3 year now, since the first V12 build that installs PostgreSQL by default has been created.
