Install B&R 6.5 on Windows 7 Pro x64

[lp@albersdruck.de]

Hello everyone,

I searched a bit about this topic but could not come up with anything recent about it. Searching for "install on Windows 7" returns too many results.

So far I have installed B&R 6.5 (essentials standard edition) on a windows server 2003 (32bit) with sql express installed by B&R on the same server. As v7 only supports 64bit OSes, I want to change that.
Unfortunately I do not have a spare windows server license to install B&R onto, but a windows 7 pro license is available.

This server is a vm on esxi 5.1 to leverage hot add, so that is a requirement for the windows 7 vm as well.
Enterprise Manager is installed and used as well.

I do know that windows 7 pro is supported as an install target.
Are there any reasons that B&R 6.5 (and v7 when it is available) should not be installed on windows 7 professional?
Or are there any reasons that it will work better on a windows server version, like features that are available only on a server install, performance considerations?

I would export the config on the old server and just install B&R on windows 7, then import the config again.

Kind regards,
Lars

[Gostev]

Hi Lars, I see no major reasons why you should not proceed with your plan. Thanks!

[tsightler]

The only thing I can think of that might be an issue is perhaps something around FLR, like restoring files from a Windows 2012 Dedupe volume. Windows 7 would not be able to mount such a volume so it wouldn't be able to perform FLR. Not an issue if you're not running Windows 2012 dedupe volumes in your environment.

[lp@albersdruck.de]

Thanks for the answers so far.

As of now we do not have server 2012 in production use yet, and that is unlikely to change for at least a year, possibly longer because of applications that are not supported to run on server 2012 (yet).

But that brings up an interesting question: would windows 8 be able to do FLR from windows 2012 dedup volumes?

Kind regards,
Lars

[foggy]

Another known limitation of Windows 7-based proxies is inability to use hotadd for populating data during incremental replication passes and failback (only network mode is supported for these operations). So make sure you have backup proxy servers on other supported Windows versions for your local replication tasks (this limitation is not so actual for remote replication, where considerably slow links become the bottleneck).

[veremin]

But that brings up an interesting question: would windows 8 be able to do FLR from windows 2012 dedup volumes?

As far as I’m concerned, Windows 8 doesn’t include any deduplication role or features, so you have to install an extracted role-set from Server 2012 to it. Because the aforesaid method is nothing but a creative workaround, I believe, such a scenario hasn’t been tested by QA team.

Thus, there is no relevant information whether this scenario works or not and you should stick to it on your own risk.

Thanks.

[lp@albersdruck.de]

Another known limitation of Windows 7-based proxies is inability to use hotadd for populating data during incremental replication passes and failback (only network mode is supported for these operations). So make sure you have backup proxy servers on other supported Windows versions for your local replication tasks (this limitation is not so actual for remote replication, where considerably slow links become the bottleneck).

Well, as we are a small business with limited resources, we do not have a DR site and do not utilize replicas at all.
So that is not a problem for now.

Thanks!

[foggy]

Ok, that was just FYI, as you've asked about reasons for not installing Veeam B&R on Windows 7.

[Gostev]

Backup proxies can still be installed on pretty much any Windows OS, including 32-bit. So, even if the need for backup proxy ever arises, it can be easily deployed on any other available server and used instead of local proxy.

[VladV]

Another known limitation of Windows 7-based proxies is inability to use hotadd for populating data during incremental replication passes and failback (only network mode is supported for these operations). So make sure you have backup proxy servers on other supported Windows versions for your local replication tasks (this limitation is not so actual for remote replication, where considerably slow links become the bottleneck).

Foggy, is it possible to give me a link where I can find the limitations for Win 7 as a backup proxy and a list of OS's that are recommended for this scenario? I am unable to find any info on it.

Thanks.

[veremin]

Release notes document included with your download (page 7):

Windows Vista and Windows 7 based backup proxy servers support “network” processing mode only for populating replica disks with data during incremental replication passes and failback. To work around this, install backup proxy servers on other supported Windows versions.

Thanks.

[foggy]

There are no other known limitations other than those mentioned in the release notes. All the recommended operating systems for Veeam B&R components are listed in the same doc under System Requirements section. Thanks.

[lp@albersdruck.de]

FYI:

I upgraded to B&R 7.0 this weekend.
The upgrade completed without any problems, after installing and 3 reboots later everything was "just as it used to be".
The vSphere Web client plugin does not work yet, but it is not that important in this small environment. I'll see to that later.

First thing I noticed: the new "throughput graph" that is similar to windows 8 explorer.
So far I like version 7. Parallel processing has saved me around 15 minutes on 2 backup jobs with several VMs.
I do have two large VMs that each is in its own job; next weekend I'll test if putting these two in one job will speed things up.

So a big thumbs up from me, good work!

[Vitaliy S.]

Glad that everything is running fine for you. As to the vSphere Web client issue, were you not able to install it - or you have issues with the plug-in not being populated with any data?

[Gostev]

I've seen some screenshots of working plug-in on Twitter already, so at least we can assume it's not totally broken in the release code