VMware Upgrade/Migration - Veeam Consequence?

[evander]

Hi all - I am planning on upgrading my VMware (Broadcom) v7 environment to v9 but instead of doing an in-place upgrade I plan to do a brand new install on new hardware and migrating the virtual machines from old cluster to new cluster.
This means however that I will have a new vCenter box too.

Question: how will this affect my existing Veeam backup infrastructure and jobs? Can I migrate everything so the jobs continue as before? If so, how easy is that?

Thx

[Mildur]

Hi Evander,

A new vCenter means new VM IDs (MoREFs). Our product tracks VMs using these MoREF IDs, so a VM with a new MoREF ID is essentially considered a new VM by the backup server.

If you plan to continue existing backup chains, you’ll need to use our VM Migration Utility. This tool updates the MoREF IDs for migrated VMs in the backup server database after a vCenter migration.

Please make sure to read and understand the process before starting the migration — especially the Before You Begin page.

Best regards,
Fabian

[evander]

Thanks Fabian - glad to hear there is a migration tool to assist with this. I will read up and see what can/can't/should/shouldn't be done with the tool.

Side question - I also plan to upgrade from v12 to new Veeam v13 as part of this new migration to new hardware. Is there any value/benefit to upgrading and migrating at the same time as moving to new cluster? I would expect more risk and not advised, but if the v13 upgrade process includes a process related to the migration tool mentioned above there might be some value perhaps? Thoughts?

[Mildur]

There haven’t been any new features or changes added to the migration tool in v13 compared to v12.3, when we released the PowerShell cmdlets.
So, you can start the VMware migration with either backup server v12 or v13.

Regarding the migration, I don’t recommend doing both projects simultaneously (on the same day).
Either upgrade the backup server first and let it run for a few days afterward, or migrate your VMware environment first and wait a few days after the MoREF ID migration before proceeding with the backup server.

Best regards,
Fabian

[evander]

Great thank you!!