Planning a v7 upgrade, have some questions...

[pkelly_sts]

I have yet to read more into the finer details but one thing I recall reading is that, to get full benefit of the newer features (WAN accel, parallel processing etc.) you should create a fresh new local backup, then use (a copy of) that to initially seed the full to the remote site, ready to kick off backup copies using the new process.

I currently have a 3-site setup, each doing a variety of backups to both local & remote storage (please see linked .PDF at https://www.dropbox.com/s/a59b2qiwr2vnm ... onInfo.pdf , if the link works/is allowed here)

I’m starting to plan an upgrade to v7 but trying to do it as efficiently as possible as it’s difficult to shift Tb’s of Veeam backups using LTO-3 tapes (the only tape I have compatible with DR site right now) in that I can’t get 4Tb of .VBK to the DR site via tape inside 24hrs, i.e. before the next incremental backup.

My primary question is, when doing the initial fresh full, should I have to do that for all 3 backups at the main site (see .PDF) or can I do one of those at a time?

It’s quite a pain having to do a “big-bang” upgrade like this, it would be much easier if you could stage backups, i.e. to a site at a time, but I can’t because I effectively have 3 sites using one repository server (at the DR site which does it’s own local backups, plus receives backups from both the Primary & smaller sites) because it means you can’t effectively test the upgrade at a single site before rolling it out to the others…

Also, what's the real-world impact of simply doing an in-place upgrade to all three sites at the same time, in other words, if we don't enable any of the new features immediately, what actually happens during the first backup after upgrade, does it force a fresh full, or do a verify of current backup files, i.e. should I expect the initial backup to be significantly longer than it would have been had I not upgraded?

At the moment my backups are fairly tight time-wise so it doesn't take too much to throw them with the result of all of them getting delayed. Ironically this should hopefully be helped massively by the new features in v7, I just need to make sure I can get there without affecting things too much!

Paul

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Paul,

...to get full benefit of the newer features (WAN accel, parallel processing etc.) you should create a fresh new local backup

Not really, you can use WAN accelerated backup copy jobs and parallel processing without doing fresh full backups. Parallel processing will be disabled by default (after upgrade), so you should enable it manually.

My primary question is, when doing the initial fresh full, should I have to do that for all 3 backups at the main site (see .PDF) or can I do one of those at a time?

No need to do new full backups to leverage v7 features, you can keep your existing setup/job schedule and start using backup copy jobs and parallel processing. BTW, nice setup on the picture!

Also, what's the real-world impact of simply doing an in-place upgrade to all three sites at the same time, in other words, if we don't enable any of the new features immediately, what actually happens during the first backup after upgrade, does it force a fresh full, or do a verify of current backup files, i.e. should I expect the initial backup to be significantly longer than it would have been had I not upgraded?

Actually there will be no impact, as we always try to preserve your existing workflow while migrating you to the new versions. Your backup and replication jobs will continue running in the same way as they did in v6.5.

Thank you!

[pkelly_sts]

Ah, thanks Vitaliy, you make it sound suspiciously straightforward!

Thanks also for the comment on my diag - makes me feel I'm doing something right

Paul