Question: Upgrading/Migrating, and re-designing jobs

[eduesterhaus]

Hi Veeam Community,

I have lot planned for our backup environment. Currently we have a veeam backup and replication server that will be decommissioned in the near future and replaced by a new server running veeam backup and replication.

Along with this, all of our backup storage targets are being replaced, and we will be doing a complete revamp of how our jobs are structured. Our replication targets are going to stay the same.


I'd prefer not to do everything at once, but I'm not sure of the implications or impact of doing a phased migration.

On to my actual questions:
Is it possible to have two separate veeam backup and restore servers that both manage the same vcenter server?
Can I have some servers backed up by the new veeam installation (pointing to my new repositories), and some still backed up by the old installation (pointing to old repositories)?
When I move my replication jobs to the new veeam server, can I migrate one job at a time, and avoid replicating the servers in that job from scratch?


Thanks in advance for the help/guidance!

[PTide]

Hi eduesterhaus,

Don't you mind if I ask you why do you want to have two VBR servers managing one vCenter? You could probably just create your B&R configuration backup and deploy it on your new B&R server. After deployment all you need to do is just to add your new repos, disable your old server and that's it - your new B&R is up and running and you have all of the backup chains all safe on your old repos.

Please let me know if I understood your situation wrong or if you have any other concerns in regards to upcoming infrastructure upgrade.

Thank you.

UPDATE:

Every single action of your VBR server is written into corresponding SQL database. There is no option of two VBR servers working with the same database simultaneously hence you have to deploy a separate database for your second instance of VBR. However, such an approach leads to another problem - eventually you will end up with two completely diffrent databases for the same vCenter and believe me - this is not what you want to deal with =)

[foggy]

If you'd still like to migrate gradually, re-creating the jobs from scratch, two Veeam B&R instances can coexist in your environment (and even share proxy/repository components, provided they have similar versions).

However, what Pavel has suggested looks like a more preferable way of migration. Just keep in mind the procedure to change the backup repository without copying existing files to the new one.