Migrate VBR to new server, reusing name and IP

[mrholm]

Hi all
One of our VBR servers need to be swapped to new hardware and we pakn to reuse the name and IP of the VBR servers. This is due to we have a lot of PS scripts in our environment and don't want to look through all of them.
I have migrated to new servers several times but not resued the name.
The VBR server also holds the SQL database on separate SSD drives
From what I see we should be able to do it like this:

On the orginal server:
- disable all jobs
- save the registry keys
- perform a configuaration backup
- perform a SQL backup
- remove server from domain (we use FQDN in Veeam)
- rename server and keep up for 14 days if we need anything

On the new server:
- change name to be same as original server
- add to domain
- install SQL on new server
- restore the SQL database
- install Veeam, same path and version as original server, point to Veeam DB
- add the registry keys

Do you see any issues with this or maybe some more easy way?
Also what about the Backup Enterprise Manager? We use EM for central licenses and reporting....

[PetrM]

Hi Mats,

Just two points are unclear:
1. Why are you going to restore SQL database on the new server? You can restore the actual state from configuration backup.
2. Why are you going to install SQL server explicitly on the new server? A new SQL Server instance can be installed automatically during setup of Veeam B&R.

I think such a migration will be transparent for Enterprise Manager, it will be able to connect to Veeam B&R server as IP and hostname of Veeam B&R remain intact.

Thanks!

[johannesk]

Hi Mats,

Won't you be able to use DNS alias? Thus create a new VBR server with new name. After you decommission the old server, make the name of that server an alias to the DNS record of the new server.

I wonder why that would not work?

Regards,
Jóhannes

[mrholm]

Thanks for your inut, @PetrM the reason to install the SQL server manually is that we use SQL standrad and not the Express verison since the database are 57 GB i in size.
The reason to restore the databse from SQL is to have the database in place at installation and just point to exiting DB.

[PetrM]

Hi Mats,

Thanks for clarifications but still not clear why you don't want to restore configuration? This is a recommended way to move Veeam B&R to another server. You can specify the target database on this step of the wizard. One more point to keep in mind is that you will need to re-enter all passwords and re-import all encrypted backups if there are if you move database manually. You may refer to this KB for additional details.

Thanks!