Abilities of SureBackup in testing file server migration

[cffit]

First I must say how much benefit my company gets from being able to use SureBackup as a testing area for production changes. Having a separate test environment with SharePoint, Exchange, etc is great, but when it comes time to apply SP2 to SharePoint, SureBackup lets me boot up my production SP server and see exactly what I can expect when I do it live in production. Such a useful tool! If you don't take advantage of it yet, do it!

Now, I have a scenario where I'd like to use SureBackup if I could. I'm preparing for a file server upgrade. I have our old file server, OLDFILE01, that has a virual disk for the C: drive and a virtual disk for the F: drive. The F: drive has all the data on it. I have a new file server, NEWFILE01, that is built and has just a C: drive on a virual disk. What I want to do is boot these up in a SureBackup job and then shutdown OLDFILE01, detach the virtual drive that has the F: drive, and attach that to NEWFILE01. I'm not sure if this is more than what SureBackup can do for me, but thought I'd check. I know there are other steps for a file server migration like this, but this is part I'm looking to test with VEEAM.

Also, I know in older versions of VEEAM, SureBackup would reset the virtual machines back to their original state every time you rebooted them. This made it hard to test patches and service packs as they require reboots. I notice now with v7 they seem to keep their state through reboots which is great. When did this change come?

[dellock6]

Hi,
a "quick&dirty" trick can be to use Instant VM Recovery to recover OLDFILE01, but without powering it up. Once you see "OLDFILE01_restored" in your VMware infrastructure, you can detach the F: disk from it and mount it in NEWFILE01, also using hotadd while NEWFILE01 is running in the Virtual Lab. In this way you can test the old disk on the new VM without any storage operation.

Luca.

[foggy]

Also, I know in older versions of VEEAM, SureBackup would reset the virtual machines back to their original state every time you rebooted them. This made it hard to test patches and service packs as they require reboots. I notice now with v7 they seem to keep their state through reboots which is great. When did this change come?

Not sure I cannot recall the behavior you're describing (VM reboot reverting it back to the saved state).

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Christensen,

Now, I have a scenario where I'd like to use SureBackup if I could. I'm preparing for a file server upgrade. I have our old file server, OLDFILE01, that has a virual disk for the C: drive and a virtual disk for the F: drive. The F: drive has all the data on it. I have a new file server, NEWFILE01, that is built and has just a C: drive on a virual disk. What I want to do is boot these up in a SureBackup job and then shutdown OLDFILE01, detach the virtual drive that has the F: drive, and attach that to NEWFILE01. I'm not sure if this is more than what SureBackup can do for me, but thought I'd check.

As far as I got it correctly, I don't see any issues with attaching a virtual disk from one server to another one to verify that everything is going to work in production. Luca's advice would also work, but since this is a production environment I would give the SureBackup job a try.

Thanks!

[cffit]

OK, so while in my SureBackup environment I can swap around virtual disks as long as all the VMs and virutal disks are included in the SureBackup job? That's really my main question. If so, that's great and will be very helpful to me.

[foggy]

In virtual lab you can do literally everything, I do not see why you can't swap disks there.