vSphere 4.1 support (or lack of)

[Gostev]

Just wanted to post an advance warning for those who wanted to upgrade to vSphere 4.1 the same day it becomes available. Based on the RC code we possess, the current Veeam Backup version has an issue with standalone ESX 4.1 hosts. Configurations with vCenter Server 4.1 added to the Veeam console (instead of individual ESX hosts) do not seem to be affected.

Overall, since vSphere 4.1 is pretty major update with 1 year spent in development, I do not recommend upgrading to it until we verify Veeam Backup against the RTM code. We are planning on releasing public update (Veeam Backup 4.1.2) about 1 week after vSphere 4.1 goes GA, once we have tested our code on RTM vSphere 4.1 code. Until then, we will not have official support for vSphere 4.1 (although generally everything seems to work fine with RC vSphere 4.1 code, when jobs are configured via vCenter).

Thank you!

[krowczynski]

Hi, do you know the release date of vsphere 4.1??

[Gostev]

Yes, but this information is under NDA and I cannot share it unfortunately. If this is information is critical for you to know, you may want to try and check with your VMware sales representative for some hints.

[jgremillion]

My guess is it will be out in time for VMworld (the end of August).

[dcarey]

Well if you Google vsphere 4.1 like i did yesterday and check under results for the last 24 hours...i think you'll find somebody may have tweeted what he found out as a release date...which he has now taken down...but it's still there in Google's cache.

[krowczynski]

Can you post me the link?

[TrevorBell]

check vmware website, its available to downlaod today 4.1 esxi and esx

[Libertas]

Hi Veeam Support,
I understand that you have not had time to test the release and may not be able to verify that the 4.1 update is fully compatible with the current version of Veeam B&R. However, to help us make plans, can you please confirm if the in-place upgrade of vCenter Server will be seamless as far as backup and replications are concerned, or will customers need to perform fresh backups of VMs once the vCenter has been updated?

The reason I ask is because I performed a update of the vCenter Server from 4 to 4 +Upd1 and after that upgrade, the previous backup jobs were not able to continue and I had to delete the VM lists from within the backup/replication jobs and re-add them, which meant that the first time the job was run it would perform a full backup of the VM rather then a CBT addition. With around 6TB of data being backed up, this caused me considerable problems for a first few days until i had time over the weekend to perform a re-synch of all VM.

If i have missed any information that has already been posted on the forum, then I apologise and ask to be re-directed to it.

Thank you,
Libertas

[Gostev]

Hello Libertas, I will ask our QC to verify this as well as a part of their testing.

[IamBren]

I am upgrading to 4.1 today. I'll let everyone know how the upgrade goes, and how backups run tonight (or break).

[Libertas]

I am upgrading to 4.1 today. I'll let everyone know how the upgrade goes, and how backups run tonight (or break).

THank you IamBren, best of luck to you and I cant wait for your post back.

[Gostev]

Hello Libertas, I will ask our QC to verify this as well as a part of their testing.

Hello, we have tested this scenario internally as we were in-place upgrading vCenter servers our labs, and have not observed any issues. VM IDs did not change, and all jobs continued to run as expected. Thanks!

[IamBren]

Hello, we have tested this scenario internally as we were in-place upgrading vCenter servers our labs, and have not observed any issues. VM IDs did not change, and all jobs continued to run as expected. Thanks!

I upgraded vSphere Server to 4.1 yesterday, and one of three hosts I reloaded with ESXi 4.1 (the others are the latest ESX 4.0) and our backups also ran as expected.

[beckhamk]

I assume that if you switch from regular ESX to ESXi there is nothing special needed assumming you are using vCenter and are properly licensed?

[Vitaliy S.]

That's correct, if you're using vCenter and configure all your jobs using vCenter connection, there shouldn't be any problems, all your jobs will be running fine.

[Libertas]

That's correct, if you're using vCenter and configure all your jobs using vCenter connection, there shouldn't be any problems, all your jobs will be running fine.

Hi, so upgrading the vSphere 4 to 4.1 will not cause any problems as long as the installation is done as an in-place upgrade.

Can you please also confirm that upgrading the ESXi from 4 to 4.1, which i haven't been able to do via the upgrade manager and may need to perform a re-installation via CD, will not affect the backups.

Thank you,
Farhad

[Gostev]

Can you please also confirm that upgrading the ESXi from 4 to 4.1, which i haven't been able to do via the upgrade manager and may need to perform a re-installation via CD, will not affect the backups.

That's an easy one. Re-installing ESX from scratch and re-registering VMs on it will generate new unique IDs for those VM, and thus your existing jobs with previous IDs will no longer work.

But, if your ESX host is a part of cluster, and you can move VMs of the ESX 4 host with VMotion before performing the upgrade, and then move them back to reinstalled host with VMotion - this won't affect those unique IDs, and the jobs will continue to work.

[Libertas]

That's an easy one. Re-installing ESX from scratch and re-registering VMs on it will generate new unique IDs for those VM, and thus your existing jobs with previous IDs will no longer work.

But, if your ESX host is a part of cluster, and you can move VMs of the ESX 4 host with VMotion before performing the upgrade, and then move them back to reinstalled host with VMotion - this won't affect those unique IDs, and the jobs will continue to work.

Hi Gostev,
Perhaps if I explain our exact problem, you can advice accordingly.

We have a number of remote sites which only have one ESXi host with mostly 1-2 large VMs as they are the remote sites local file server. I have attempted to update the ESXi via the update manager and it would seem I am unable to due to the zip file provided by vmware. Therefore the only alternative is to install ESXi via a cd from fresh, but keep the local vmfs store as is and not change it.

Nonetheless what then happens is that after installing anew ESXi host, the hosts unique identifier changes and as such I need to re-add it to the vCenter and then re-add the VMs installed within the ESXi host.

Therefore, when I come to perform the backup the details of the VM are incorrect and so it will not perform the backup until I remove it from the job list and then re-add it back again, which means a full VM backup.

Do you find the above to be the correct sequence of events in such a circumstance and therefore would you have an alternative approach that I can undertake not to have to perform a complete backup of the VM?

Again thank you for your help
Farhad

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Farhad,

I'm sorry for breaking in, but have you already tried following these recommendations from VMware to upgrade your standalone ESXi 4.0 hosts? I believe that it could help you to keep all VM IDs the same after the upgrade procedure takes place:
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1020673

Hope it helps!

[mblackmore]

We upgraded our test box which is only ESXi to 4.1 today, now in veeam when trying to connect to it we get the following

[Gostev]

Yes, this is expected error I have described in the first post.

[MB-NS]

Hello,

vSphere 4.1 is out since last Tuesday, what is the status of your tests on RTM code ?
Can we still expect an official support statement this week ?

Thanks

[Gostev]

Hello, the testing is complete and we have found additional issues we have not been aware about earlier, based on RC code testing. We are currently working on Veeam Backup 4.1.2 update release. I will update this topic with general availability timelines for this release once I know the approximate date, but it looks to be sometimes next week.

[aaronj]

Hello, the testing is complete and we have found additional issues we have not been aware about earlier, based on RC code testing. We are currently working on Veeam Backup 4.1.2 update release. I will update this topic with general availability timelines for this release once I know the approximate date, but it looks to be sometimes next week.

Thank you for this information. We have a new install of vCenter 4.1 and are trying to implement Veeam but not having success with backups or replication. I may try reinstalling w/ vCenter 4.0 and do an in-place upgrade to see if I can get around it.

[Willy]

Gostev wrote:Hello, the testing is complete and we have found additional issues we have not been aware about earlier, based on RC code testing. We are currently working on Veeam Backup 4.1.2 update release. I will update this topic with general availability timelines for this release once I know the approximate date, but it looks to be sometimes next week.

Hopefully, it will solve my problem. ID#528437

I was running happy on ESX4.0U2, VCenter 4.0U2 and Veeam 4.1.1. After the upgrade to 4.1.... things just fell apart.

I have tried using Win2008 R2/Win2008 Standard 64bit - VCenter/Veeam backup server in one VM, but the Virtual Appliance mode just could not work. In addition, Veeam did not remove the attached snapshot disk and snapshot removal failed. I had to manually removed the attached snapshot disk on the VCenter/Veeam server and was able to delete the snapshot.

I even tried using a separate Veeam server running on win2008 standard 32bit, but same issues.

I was about to re-install my ESX, until I read this post. Guess I will just sit tight and wait for Veeam 4.1.2, and run on network mode for the time being.

Fingers cross.

[Libertas]

Hello, the testing is complete and we have found additional issues we have not been aware about earlier, based on RC code testing. We are currently working on Veeam Backup 4.1.2 update release. I will update this topic with general availability timelines for this release once I know the approximate date, but it looks to be sometimes next week.

Hi Gostev,
Can you please confirm if we are able to upgrade to ESX(i) 4.1 + vSphere 4.1 as long as we are performing our backups using vStorage API Network mode, or would you strongly suggest that, based on the errors you have seen, we should avoid upgrading until Veeam 4.1.2 has been released?
The reason I ask is because we have made plans to perform the upgrade to ESX(i) + vSphere 4.1 at the end of this week, and I was hoping not to have to change those plans. However, if our backup mechanism (entirely performed by Veeam at present) is likely to encounter problems, I presume best practise would dictate that we leave things "as is" for the time being, until the next version of Veeam has been released.
Thank you, Farhad

[Gostev]

Hello, I recommend to avoid upgrading to vSphere 4.1 until Veeam Backup 4.1.2 is released.

[jerome2310]

OK, and when will it be released ?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello, Jerome, actually Anton has already answered that question at one of his posts above. Please look it through. Thanks!

[prodigynwp]

Hello,

The error is caused by a variable mismatch in the clients.xml response. In version 4.0.x the apiVersion value was "4.0", in 4.1 the value appears to be "v4.1". In ESX 4 the file is typically located under /usr/lib/vmware/hostd/docroot/client/clients.xml . If you modify the file (change the value to 4.1) veeam starts working. I haven't noticed any other issues with our esx hosts or the vi client but I’m sure there is a reason for the change by vmware - I wouldn't recommend doing this in production but maybe this can offer a select few a work around until veeam backup 4.1.2 is released...

Steven