vCenter to 6.7, will Veeam migration tool work?

[HendersonD]

We are using vCenter 6.0 update 3 running under Windows Server 2012 R2
We just brought up a new vCenter 6.7 appliance
We will be migrating VMs using this process

1. Shutdown the VM
2. Remove the VM from inventory
3. In the new vCenter, browse the datastore, locate the VM, and register

After reading this article, https://www.veeam.com/kb2136, I realize the RefIDs will change. The utility that Veeam provides remaps IDs so all previous backup jobs are not lost. Otherwise it is starting from scratch with the first backup being a full. Does anyone know if this utility works under vCenter 6.7? This is in the article: "This VMware utility only works for a 5.5 VC to a 6.5U2 VCSA!"

[DGrinev]

Hi Henderson,

I assume to use native VMware migration tool, all you need to do is start the installation process of VCSA 6.7 and choose Migrate, here you will find an article about the process.
In the wizard you are able to type in source vCenter address, target vCenter or ESXi host address and let it migrate all the data from vCenter 6.0 u3 Windows based to VCSA 6.7.
VMware made really good improvement in their native migration tool, since version 6. Thanks!

[HendersonD]

For several reasons we are not migrating our current vCenter servers running under Windows to our new vCenter 6.7 appliances. We brought up the new vCenters fresh and then are just migrating the VMs. Migrating the VMs gives them new RefIDs, hence my original question

[veremin]

Our utility has not been tested against vSphere 6.7, so, currently it is not supported.

We're going to investigate what'd it cost us to bring support for vSphere 6.7; will keep you posted.

Thanks.

[HendersonD]

So my only choice at this point is migrate the VMs with the process I described and then start backups over again? This might be the way it has to be, just checking

[foggy]

Currently this looks like the only option.

[skrause]

For several reasons we are not migrating our current vCenter servers running under Windows to our new vCenter 6.7 appliances. We brought up the new vCenters fresh and then are just migrating the VMs. Migrating the VMs gives them new RefIDs, hence my original question

Are the reasons enough to put you through the headache of having to re-do all of your Veeam jobs, rather than just do the VMware migration?

I recently upgraded all of our VCSAs from 5.5 to 6.5U1 using the built in migration tool. The only thing I had to do with Veeam was to re-sync the VBR servers with the vCenters because the certificate had changed in the process. All my backup and replication jobs continued like nothing was different.

The migration process does give you options to leave statistics and task/event history or to copy it so if you just wanted to have a "clean slate" then you could choose that option.

[pdimarco]

Hi Vladimir,

Any update on this tool upgrade to 6.7 ?

Thanks in advance.
Pascal

[HendersonD]

In the end, bringing up a new VCSA 6.7, migrating VMs which gives them a new RefID, and then just redoing our Veeam jobs worked fine and it was not a huge amount of work. A bunch of screen shots of the Veeam setup under vCenter running under windows let us reproduce our setup easily.

[veremin]

Any update on this tool upgrade to 6.7 ?

What kind of migration you're going to perform? If you're migrating to VCSA 6.7, then, you don't need our utility any longer - everything is preserved by native migration assistant. Thanks!

[fmorez]

Any update on Migration Tool compatibility with vCenter 6.7 fresh install ?
Thanks

[foggy]

Hi François, could you please answer the same question - why do you need this tool with version 6.7 in the first place?

[fmorez]

Hi foggy,

In the case of I need to deploy new VCSA 6.7 server and I cannot use migrate or upgrade option from VMware assistant because source vCenter is running on 5.X

or just don't want to preserve old VCenter historical data

Thanks for feedback

[foggy]

In this case you can upgrade to vCenter Server 6.0 first. The tool also allows to migrate configuration without historical data.

[peeky1323]

Hi,

Does the Veeam vCenter Migration Utility (https://www.veeam.com/kb2136) work with a vCenter 6.0 on Windows migrated to VCSA 6.7 U3? I see it has not been updated in a while.

The migration tool provided by VMware is not possible for us at the moment as we wish to keep the Windows server currently running vCenter in production as it has other roles (such as Veeam) and iSCSI targets and a few more. The VMware migration utility seems to apply the IP address of the Windows vCetner to the VCSA then shutdown the Windows vCenter Server. I would rather move to the VCSA instead of upgrading vCetner Windows as 6.7 is the last release possible for this so a new VCSA and then the Veeam utility would be my preference. Is this possible?

THanks,

Matt

[veremin]

As far as I remember, the Migration utility has not been tested against vCenter 6.7 (due to VMware assistant presence). Thanks!

[dasfliege]

We're about to do a vCenter consolidation for one of our customers. They have three independent vCenters which three Hosts each and we will now migrate all of the Hosts into a single vCenter. As we're pretty short of backup storage, i want to avoid that we have to take new full backups as VM-IDs may change when i migrate a host from one vCenter to another. There is no VMWare utility that is helping with consolidating several vCenters into one. Has anyone done this before and has any hint of how to achive this without having VM IDs changing?

[foggy]

Even if this was possible, there's always a chance that some objects would have similar IDs in different vCenter's so you would need to resolve conflicts somehow...

[dasfliege]

I've adjusted a PS script i have found in another threat. Seems to work just well this way:

Code: Select all

#1. Stop all Veeam Jobs
#2. Perform a configuration backup and a veeam database backup
#3. Install PowerCLI
#4. Point "Get-VBRBackup" to the job containing the migrated VMs
#5. Point "Get-VBRServer" to the vCenter that the VMs have been migrated to
#6. Execute the script with commented out line "$object.UpdateObj......"
#7. Double check values to get updated are correct
#8. Execute the script with comment removed
#9. Start backups


# Get backup by name and obtain objects within.
$backup = Get-VBRBackup -Name '<name of the backup job>'
$objects = $backup.GetObjects()
$migratedVMsNames = $backup.GetObjects() | select Name

# Get new host VMs were migrated to.
$server = Get-VBRServer -Name '<name of the vcenter server as its listen in your veeam inventory>'

# Search for migrated VMs and trigger backup objects re-mapping.
foreach ($vm in $migratedVMsNames) {
    $entity = Find-VBRViEntity -Server $server -Name $vm.Name
    foreach ($object in $objects) {
        if ($object.Name -eq $entity.Name) {
            Write-Host "Updating VM: " $object.Name
            Write-Host "Old ObjectID: " $object.ObjectID 
            Write-Host "New ObjectID: " $entity.Reference
            Write-Host "Old HostID: " $object.HostID 
            Write-Host "New HostID: " $server.Id
            Write-Host ""
            $object.UpdateObjectHostIdObjectIdAndSaveOldInfo($server.Id, $entity.Reference) #Comment out this line for testing
        }
    }
}