Changing to VCenterServer Appliance

[bushtor]

Hi,
Until now we have had Veeam B&R and VCenter Server running on a win2008r2 VM (very satisfied with veeam

However I wanted to start using the VCenter Server appliance, I just installed and configured it and now I have two questions:

Should we just install veeam B&R on one of our domain controllers, or what is 'best practice' in this scenario. I assume you cannot install veeam directly on top of our vcenter appliance

What is the preferred way to transfer the license, the config is simple so we'll just do that from scratch but I don't want to jeopardize my license

Thanks for comments

Tor

[foggy]

Tor, why not you want to continue using your existing Veeam B&R installation? Veeam B&R server location doesn't actually matters so you can continue using it or, if you want to get rid of the existingwin2008r2 VM for some reason, install it on any other existing Windows PC (either physical or virtual), your workstation, for example.

If you go with the new installation, you can simply specify your license while installing Veeam B&R and you are good to go. Remember, that Veeam B&R is licensed by the source hosts you backup VMs on, not by Veeam B&R installation.

[veremin]

The config is simple so we'll just do that from scratch.

In addition, if you eventually decide to use another machine as the VB&R Server, instead of creating your VB&R configuration from the scratch, you can put into use “Configuration Backup” functionality.

This is completely new feature that was introduced in VB&R 6.5. When you create a configuration backup, you export the configuration data from the Veeam Backup & Replication SQL database and save it into a backup file on the repository. If the Veeam Backup server fails for some reason, you can re-install the Veeam Backup server and then quickly restore its configuration from the backup file. Alternatively, you can apply the configuration of one Veeam Backup server to any other Veeam Backup server in your backup infrastructure.

Long story short, all you need to do in your case:

1) On your existing VB&R server: perform Configuration Backup.
2) On machine you’re willing to use as VB&R Server: Install VB&R software and apply the configuration.

Thanks.

[dellock6]

Hi,
if you are running on Veeam BR 6.5 (or you first upgrade to this release), you can backup the entire configuration and restore it on another scratch installation of Veeam.
About licensing, you can use the same license on the new vCenter, only please be aware that by moving the VMs to a new vCenter, the MorefID of the VMs will change, so you would need to do full backups even if the VMs are the same, but from a vCenter perspective they will appear as new ones...

Luca.

[bushtor]

Thanks for the clarifications.

I'm installing on a Windows Server 2012. The first attempt it couldn't complete the installation of its own sql server and the second attempt (after completely uninstalling and reboot) it couldn't install .NET 3.5) Are there any compatibility issues with Server 2012?

regards Tor

[foggy]

No, if you are using the latest Veeam B&R 6.5 version.

[bushtor]

B&R 6.5.0.109_x64 from the download portal. Any newer? The msi files are dated Oct. 30th

Does it exist any whitepapers on what to do manually if installation errors like I recevied occurs..?

regards Tor

[veremin]

I'm installing on a Windows Server 2012. The first attempt it couldn't complete the installation of its own sql server and the second attempt (after completely uninstalling and reboot) it couldn't install .NET 3.5).

I’m a little bit confused by your issue, since Veeam Backup & Replication 6.5 requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4, not 3.5 and Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 Express (included in the setup).Furthermore, I haven’t seen similar errors so far.

However, you can try to manually enable .NET 3.5 feature in your Windows Server 2012, and see if it solves your problems.

Be aware that, previously it has been reported that under specific circumstances people couldn’t install .NET 3.5 via Server Manager in Windows Server 2012. Thus, you probably need to enable this feature through command prompt, using the following command:

Code: Select all

dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /all /Source:d:\sources\sxs /LimitAccess

Note: Source should be the Windows installation disc. In this case, it is located on D:\

Thanks.

[Cokovic]

You forgot an "a" in /Limitaccess