2012 R2 support for B&R server/proxy and 2012 R2 VMware VMs?

[davidb1234]

We are planning on building a new environment later this month and would like to use 2012 R2 instead of 2012. Does veeam 7 support the installation on a physical 2012 R2 server as a backup server/proxy? Will Veeam 7 have any issues backing up 2012 R2 vmware VMs?

We are planning the following:

2012 R2 domain
Physical 2012 R2 server for Veeam 7
Physical 2012 R2 DC
Physical 2012 R2 VCENTER server running vpshere 5.1
2012 R2 VMs to be backed up.
SQL 2012 for all SQL instances

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi David,

B&R 7.0 supports installing all Veeam components on Windows Server 2012 R2, however backing up VMs running Windows Server 2012 R2 or Windows 8.1 is not currently supported. We will provide full support for Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1 in the next patch.

Thanks!

[davidb1234]

Can you elaborate? I have some 2012 R2 VMs running in vmware and our current Veeam 6.5 inplementation can back them up just fine. What issues have you seen with Veeam 7 backing up 2012 R2 and 8.1 VMs?

Or are you saying Veeam B&R can only be installed on a physical 2012 R2 server right now?

[Gostev]

OK, I've corrected Vitaly's response inline above, because it was somewhat confusing.

What issues have you seen with Veeam 7 backing up 2012 R2 and 8.1 VMs?

Possible issues with application-aware processing. Aside of that, of course B&R is able to backup any VM with any OS at all (or even without any OS for that matter), because we do an image-level backup.

[davidb1234]

Possible issues? So is it not safe to back up AD and SQL in running 2012 R2 VMs yet? Application-aware processing is a requirement.

This would put a huge monkey wrench in our plans and we don't want to install 2012 or 2008 R2. Do you know when the patch to provide support for application aware image processing in 2012 R2 Vms will be released? Our plan was to use all 2012 R2 EFI VMs.

If we do run in to an issue would it present an error or would we just think we have good backups and then not?

[dellock6]

Is there really a difference if the error will be a visible one or a subtle one? Unsupported to me means "no update, and wait".
What are the 2012 R2 features you need that are not available on plain 2012?

Luca.

[davidb1234]

Is there really a difference if the error will be a visible one or a subtle one? Unsupported to me means "no update, and wait".
What are the 2012 R2 features you need that are not available on plain 2012?

Luca.

We are being asked to build a 2012 R2 environment rather than 2012 and then dealing with upgrading the entire environment later. There are plenty of annoyances in 2012 that have been fixed in 2012 R2. And if a patch was coming out in a few weeks we would simply delay the project. So these are all important questions to me and I asked for specifics because he said "possible" issues meaning we may not have issues.

We have a few 2012 R2 VMs in house that are being backed up with Veeam 6.5 and have not seen any issues. These VMs have SQL. So if it is just an AD issue we can work around it by not backing up that AD VM and just backing up SQL and IIS 2012 R2 VMs.

[Gostev]

Luca pretty much nailed it.

I cannot provide any specifics, because the testing is underway. We need to validate hundreds of application configurations, and it takes significant time. We always take OS and application compatibility testing seriously. We don't want to rush the announcement, just to end up in embarrassing situations later... like most recent case of vSphere 5.5 not functioning when deployed in clean Windows Server 2012 environment

From general considerations, I would not recommend going with Windows Server 2012 R2 at this time, unless you honestly want to be the one running into, and reporting all the new bugs to Microsoft. Let someone else do this for you. Remember that 2012 R2 is not even generally available yet, that should happen later this month... very few production users at this time.

In any case, we are currently planning to add support for Windows Server 2012 R2 in Q4 2013, and I will have more precise timelines for you in about 2 weeks.

[davidb1234]

I appreciate that last comment very much. At least it helps us with our planning. Thank you Gostev!

[lando_uk]

Hi

We have been waiting for 2012 R2 to be released before setting up a new repository server as it's meant to have better de-duplication. Can you confirm that we can install the Veeam components like proxy and WAN accellerator etc on 2012R2?

It's out tomorrrow and I wanted these new servers up and running for next week as we are out of space!

Cheers

[foggy]

You can see the confirmation above:

B&R 7.0 supports installing all Veeam components on Windows Server 2012 R2

[levibeckner]

I see that v7.0 r2 of VBR is out.

2 questions:
1 - Can I upgrade my VBR Cloud Edition?

2 - Regarding VM Guests running Windows Server 2012 r2 with Windows based deduplication enabled on the guest volumes, there is a note on the patch release page, http://www.veeam.com/KB1831. In the Known Issues section, the note says, "In Windows Server 2012 R2 environments with Windows Server deduplication feature in use, be sure to install Veeam Backup & Replication on Windows Server 2012 R2, and enable Data Deduplication feature. Windows Server 2012 deduplication driver is not compatible with Windows Server 2012 R2 deduplication, causing file level recovery errors with false data corruption reports". Does that mean I can only replicate that Windows 2012r2 guest if I install the VBR processes on a Windows 2012r2 Server?

Thanks,

Levi

[Gostev]

1. Yes.
2. No, it does not mean that. Only FLR is affected.

[balocco]

1. Yes.
2. No, it does not mean that. Only FLR is affected.

Hi, thank you for your answers in this thread.
Just one question: Win 2012 R2 dedup cannot be enabled on Windows system disk (usually C:), so I need to add a second disk or volume to enable dedup on Win 2012 R2 server with Veeam B&R... is it true?

Thank you.

[foggy]

Yes, if you're planning to keep your backups locally on the backup server, you can create a separate volume, add it as a backup repository, and enable deduplication on it.

[balocco]

No, I'll use an external NAS. Do I Need to enable dedup anyway?

[foggy]

Sorry, I did not get you right initially. All you need to do to be able to use FLR from deduplicated volumes, is enable Data Deduplication feature on the backup server using the Add Roles and Features Wizard. No need to enable deduplication itself on specific partitions actually.

[balocco]

Ok, got it.
Thank you so much.