Seeking for advice on migration preparation

[mnr]

Hi, I'd like to ask for some advice/best practice here as I need to perform migration from vcenter cluster A to B while maintain the backup process (at night) with minimum impact and without doing full backup again. I don't have demo instance so I can't simulate the lab on this scenario

My environment is
Vcenter 6.7 cluster A with 2 sockets CPU for each host 1 and 2 on storage (30+ VM with 14TB of data) over iSCSI 10GB with Veeam Backup server and old storage
Veeam backup physical server version 11 with 10GB adapter (license with 4 sockets CPU)
Vcenter 7 cluster B with 2 sockets CPU for each host 3 and 4 on new SAN storage over FC (vmotion on 1gb network) - new server and storage and all configured to be ready for migration

What I need to do here is to migrate vcenter 6.7 to vcenter 7 cluster without downtime and also replace Veeam backup server with 10GB adapter with new HBA card

After migration environment will be vcenter7 cluster connect SAN sotrage and veeam backup server over FC using Direct Attach

My approach to do this right now
1. In cluster A (vcenter 6.7), Move high priority VM to host 1 and remain low priority vm in host 2
2. Remove host 2 in cluster A, then add host 2 into cluster B
3. Perform storage vmotion from host 2 to host 3 in cluster B (EVC support)
4. If successful, remove host 2 then add host 1 into cluster B
5. Perform storage vmotion to host 4
6. Replace 10GB card in Veeam physical with HBA
7. Go to Veeam B&R, remove cluster A, Edit backup job, surebackup, virtual lab to point into new cluster

My backup approach is to use vsphere replication to replicate from cluster A to B but customer wants to avoid downtime at all cost. Hence, this is last resort

I still have many doubts on this though which need advice from experts here
1. Can I ask customer to contact Veeam Sales rep to increase license to 8 sockets for few weeks for migration purpose?
2. If Veeam sales rep allow it, can I add new cluster with different vcenter version (6.7 > 7) and perform quick migration instead?
3. Should I replace 10GB adapter to HBA first and configure Veeam to backup on LAN for Cluster A to let it continue backup job and Direct Access for Cluster B over FC for new backup job?
4. Do I need to use vcenter migration utility https://www.veeam.com/kb2136 to avoid full backup after migration? If I use this tool, do I need to reconfigure the source and target host/surebackup/virtual lab again? or it'll automatically mapped.
5. Is quick migration faster than storage v-motion?

Thank you very much. It's a long post but I tried to elaborate as much as possible as this is my first time to encounter this scenario and without demo instance it's very difficult to prepare for migration. Trial license already used for previous project so this time I don't have license to try anymore

[HannesK]

Hello,
and welcome to the forums.

I don't have demo instance so I can't simulate the lab on this scenario

a nested VMware environment with 90 days trial license is something that might help

1-7: that sounds like VMware features, so I don't comment on them and assume you checked that all that works. Having two VCenters sounds like a challenge to me. Upgrading the VCenter would make things easier with Veeam.

My backup approach is to use vsphere replication to replicate from cluster A to B but customer wants to avoid downtime at all cost. Hence, this is last resort

Veeam Replication would also be available Or Veeam CDP

1. you can.
2. yes, old to new works.
3. It's 2022 and removing a 10G adapter sounds wrong to me To answer the question: the storage that has more data should have the fastest connection to the backup system
4. yes. That's why I mentioned earlier to think about upgrading the VCenter instead of using a new one. There are also alternative ways for morefid changes in the database (forum search helps)
5. maybe. That needs to be tested, I have no idea how to predict that.

Best regards,
Hannes

[mnr]

Hi Hennes,

Thank you very much. I reached out to veeam rep and she helped issue additional license for migration propose. This is very helpful.

Customer requested not to upgrade as they wanted fresh clean install vcenter. So I have to fulfilled their request so need to do full backup again.

one quick question, when I added new storage to Veeam, should I created new VMware backup proxy and configure transport mode to Direct Access (FC) instead of using existing one?

Customer currently use iSCSI 10GB to backup their old infrastructure. I'm not sure if I configure from Automatic > Direct Access, will it impact the current backup job which is run on iSCSI?

Kind regards,
Metha

[HannesK]

Hello,
I'm not 100% about understanding the question correctly. But I try it with a general answer.

Every component (proxy, repository etc.) should only be used by one backup server. Proxy sharing is possible, but the two backup servers don't know about each other. So they might overload the proxy.

If the new storage has fibre channel, then I would use fibre channel, yes

Best regards,
Hannes

[mnr]

Hi Hannes,

Thank you very much for your support.

Kind regards,
Metha