Host-based backup of VMware vSphere VMs.
Post Reply
pkelly_sts
Veteran
Posts: 600
Liked: 66 times
Joined: Jun 13, 2013 10:08 am
Full Name: Paul Kelly
Contact:

Replication during upgrades

Post by pkelly_sts »

We've recently purchased licenses to cover backups at a remote site (which has been scarily devoid of backups for far too long) and the site is essentially a two-host setup (VC-connected) with only internal (no shared) storage with 4 VMs running on one host and the other effectively sitting as a standby.

Thing is, these hosts are also ESXi 4.1 so well out of date & needing upgrades. Now that we've got Veeam available there and have successfully completed an initial replica from one host to the other, I was wondering if we'd be able to leverage these replicas to allow us to upgrade one host at a time.

In other words, if we "fail over" all VMs to host 2, in-place upgrade host 1 ESXi, will we then be able to fail them back to host 1 to enable us to do an in-place upgrade of host 2, or will the different ESXi versions cause us issues?

Just thinking aloud through upgrade options at this point & thought I'd double-check what's feasible as we've never needed to fail-over in anger yet, only tests/sandboxing etc.

Paul
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20271
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Replication during upgrades

Post by veremin »

In other words, if we "fail over" all VMs to host 2, in-place upgrade host 1 ESXi, will we then be able to fail them back to host 1 to enable us to do an in-place upgrade of host 2, or will the different ESXi versions cause us issues?
Since it's going to be in-place upgrade, the described approach should work smoothly. Though, I would backup those VMs first just to be on the safe side. Thanks.
pkelly_sts
Veteran
Posts: 600
Liked: 66 times
Joined: Jun 13, 2013 10:08 am
Full Name: Paul Kelly
Contact:

Re: Replication during upgrades

Post by pkelly_sts »

Excellent, I suspected as much, thanks for the confirmation.

(Backups are very high on the agenda now! :)
veremin
Product Manager
Posts: 20271
Liked: 2252 times
Joined: Oct 26, 2012 3:28 pm
Full Name: Vladimir Eremin
Contact:

Re: Replication during upgrades

Post by veremin »

You're welcome. Kindly, keep us updated on the results of your findings. Thanks.
Delo123
Veteran
Posts: 361
Liked: 109 times
Joined: Dec 28, 2012 5:20 pm
Full Name: Guido Meijers
Contact:

Re: Replication during upgrades

Post by Delo123 »

Hi Paul,

you should be fine doing that. However remember that if you should update the virtual Hardware on the vm's (which is not necessary) beyond vmx-7 or 8 i believe you cannot run them on esx4 anymore.
So simply update one host, move your replica's over, update the other one and then you can do everything you want :)
pkelly_sts
Veteran
Posts: 600
Liked: 66 times
Joined: Jun 13, 2013 10:08 am
Full Name: Paul Kelly
Contact:

Re: Replication during upgrades

Post by pkelly_sts »

Yup, I'm aware of that but it's certainly worth highlighting here to others' that might try the approach. I'll report back when we're done...
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: IvanK and 64 guests