Need to setup CDP but ran into issues

[dimaslan]

Hello,

I am trying to configure Veeam CDR from on-premises 6.7 vcenter to a remote esxi host. Sadly when I tried to get the remote esxi under my vcenter (there's VPN) I discovered it's vmware 7.0.3.
There are already many TBs or existing replicas on that esxi.
Sadly my plan to upgrade my vcenter to v7 is months away but I am also facing issues with backups and replication because many of my vms need a tight RPO of 1 hour. So, pretty much all there time there's snapshots being done in my infra, whether for backups or for replications.
I wanted to start going into CDP to both avoid replication snapshots and also lower my RPO.
Question is, if I do fresh install of vmware 6.7 to that remote host, what will happen to the replicas? I think even if I do it and import the replicas afterwards, we will not be able to use them as seeding for the initial CDP run, correct?

[david.domask]

Hi dimaslan,

>Question is, if I do fresh install of vmware 6.7 to that remote host, what will happen to the replicas? I think even if I do it and import the replicas afterwards, we will not be able to use them as seeding for the initial CDP run, correct?

Likely these replicas will have a higher VM hardware version than 6.7 supports, so they will likely not run, and similarly they will not be usable for seeding purposes.

So you are correct, starting with fresh replicas would be the way to go if you're planning to do the downgrade of the vmware environment.