Safe versions of ESXi for Veeam?

[christiankelly]

Is there a definitive list of what versions of ESX are safe from CBT corruption issues or any others Veeam has seen?

Of course the easy answer is most likely “update to the latest version of whatever tree you’re on” but I have a lot of clients (100) about to adopt Veeam and I have a list of every ESXi server and what version it’s on.

I have builds from 5.0 all the way to 6.0 and I won’t have time to update them all, but I’d go after build numbers Veeam was known to have issues with if I could find a list. It would almost be like the VMWare HCL but would be a Veeam “Compatibility list”.

If this doesn’t exist today I think it would be worth the effort. Veeam could add SAN software versions and maybe even other approved hardware in the future?

Thanks,

[Gostev]

Christian,

If you are after the official support statement - then as per our System Requirements, Veeam ONLY supports the latest version of each tree - and that requirement is in place exactly for the reliability purposes. Every non-current version will have some bugs that may impact backup and recovery.

Of course, we will never turn you around in support if your hypervisor is not up to date, because obviously we were testing and are compatible with every existing ESXi build. However, if you truly want to ensure your clients are not running into issues (particularly with Veeam), you do want to patch them up to the latest available build of the tree sooner rather than later.

Now, as far as CBT corruptions specifically, your top priority should be getting your clients with ESXi 6 to at least Update 1b. Previous ESXi versions had another major CBT bug (and by the way, there's no ESXi 4 build that fixes it) - however, for that CBT issue we do have a workaround in the code. So, eliminating ESXi 6 hosts prior to Update 1b should be the priority (as this particularly bug is 10x nastier than all other bugs of previous ESXi versions collectively) - please focus on that and don't worry about previous ESXi versions until you're done with all ESXi 6 hosts.

Thanks!

[Pat490]

I would update esxi 5.0 & 5.1 anyway because it is EOL by august!

http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/support ... Matrix.pdf

[rpop]

Hello,

Regarding all problems with CBT, VMXNET3, and so on...( take a look on the last chronicle of Gostev) with recent ESXi 6 release,
i would like to know what is the last and stable release advisable by Veeam.

Thanks for your help

Daniel