vSphere 5.1 and Veeam B&R 6.1

[MIG Mike]

What is the rush with everyone needing to get on to 5.1? 5.0U1 is doing just fine at the moment...

Biggest benefit for us is storage vMotion in the standard license (I fought for enterprise, but didn't get it). But VMWare tools not needing reboots and the unified web interface are also good reasons.

We went to 5.0 (from 3.5) very shortly after it was released without much trouble. So if B&R fully supported 5.1, I would probably just go ahead and upgrade.

[ipm]

Uhm, seems like Apple fever about new products, kinda like "hey, there is vSphere 5.1 out, it's so cool, let's get it, 5.0u1 is an old crap".
Even without Veeam involved, have you all checked things like storage firmwares, 3rd party software involved, every piece of the environment, to be sure is compatible with vSphere 5.1? Isn't backup something important to you?

Also, it's not only about the uuid error on ESXi 5.1 (got already many customers rushing with upgrades then complaining...), did someone deployed a new v9 VM and tried to save it? (I didn't). Since we have support with Veeam as customers, I'd like to hear from them "ok, NOW you can upgrade". I can live happy with my 5.0u1 for now...

Seriously...totally agree.

[ptcruisergt]

Biggest benefit for us is storage vMotion in the standard license (I fought for enterprise, but didn't get it). But VMWare tools not needing reboots and the unified web interface are also good reasons.

We went to 5.0 (from 3.5) very shortly after it was released without much trouble. So if B&R fully supported 5.1, I would probably just go ahead and upgrade.

Don't forget enhanced vmotion. No shared storage required to migrate guests.. awesome! Lots of good reasons to get on to 5.1.

[vmbackupuser]

Similarly, NetApp Metrocluster with FC was only cerified for vSphere 5 on Sept. 10th 2012

A word to the wise, Be sure to ensure your primary storage vendor and their plug-ins are certified with vSphere 5.1 before upgrading.

http://datacenterdude.com/vmware/netapp ... ification/
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/micros ... Id=2031038

[Gostev]

Anyone testing vSphere 5.1 upgrade in the labs? Is it just us, or this is the hardest upgrade ever? We've been fighting with our department's test lab for 2 days now...

[tietzjd]

Have had no issues with 5.1 on it's own so far. Are you using VUM? Starting from scratch and applying host templates? Did you have any issues with the Beta code?

[Gostev]

No problems when starting from scratch, our QC has already deployed numerous vSphere 5.1 labs without any problems. But in-place upgrade appears to be major pain! Glad this is nothing but our personal test lab, we can certainly live without it for a few days.

Will try to remember to document all resolutions once we get through this.

[tietzjd]

Gostev- Please do, I also not had issue in production , Non-Veeam accounts. It would be interesting to know what builds your upgrading from, and what versions (IE enterprise or standard). The adding of new backup software and replication in to the base hypervisor is major change, this is major upgrade not just simple service pack.

[dellock6]

I think VMware created too much confidence in the upgrade by calling it 5.1 rather than new major version. Things like SSO and other components are a major change from 5.0, but the small version increment made many sysadmins too confident in the upgrade process...

Luca.

[NightBird]

Upgrading from 4.0 to 4.1 was major pain to, because of vcenter passing from 32bits to 64bits OS.

Boris

[dellock6]

Right, I almost forgot it, thanks for remembering

Luca.

[ashleyw]

FYI..
we initially tried an in-place upgrade and found there were too many issues. so the easiest approach for us was;
- set up a new vcentre VM on same IP/host name as original one.
- Attach the existing vcentre database to the new install and then proceed.

this way the vcentre settings will be retained (and database structures etc upgraded automatically) and the vcentre itself will be a fresh install.

Once you've got vcentre up, you then need to upgrade the ESXi hosts to 5.1, but we found doing this through the upgrade manager caused various random issues with the ESXi hosts so we went and reinstalled these form scratch and made a host profile from the first host and then rippled this through the cluster.

After all this we are looking good and the farm is running really well - we have updated all the tools to the latest and we have migrated all the virtual hardware to level 9. Backup jobs seem to be working fine, and CBT appears to be fine. Performance is looking great. Even our virtualised Mac appears to still work thanks to Donk.

We are going through the last of the quirks with Veeam - we are having issues with some of the replication jobs (despite revoking the licensing on the hosts etc)- we are considering removing the vcentre instance from Veeam and then re-adding it back in to see if that resolves our issues.

[ashleyw]

Replication is now working fine. We resolved the issues by manually specifying the source and destination proxies rather than taking the automatic settings and making sure the replication meta data was stored on a different source SAN - after this everything is working. I suspect our replication jobs were breaking because the old meta data store was referring to vcentre object IDs which had now changed as a result of the upgrade to v5.1.

HW level 9 VMs replicating fine.

We'll look at the vpower quirks early next week once we have a full run through of our farm.

All looking pretty sweet from where I'm sitting.

[sdengscherz]

Hello,


just found this thread after we upgraded to vSphere 5.1 yesterday and getting errors "Error: Host with uuid '...' was not found" tonight in Veeam.

So there won't be any support from Veeam for vSphere 5.1 until Q4 2012? What's with all the customers (especially small ones that don't need much time and extensive planning in upgrading their VMware infrastructure) that already have migrated to vSphere 5.1?

I think downgrading the hosts to 5.0U1 isn't an option either as the machines seem to have gotten new uuids already?


Kind regards, sd

[dellock6]

About uuid problem, there is a workaround, remove old hosts from Veeam licensing and register the updated ones. You would be anyway unsopported until 6.5.

What's with all the customers (especially small ones that don't need much time and extensive planning in upgrading their VMware infrastructure) that already have migrated to vSphere 5.1?

Don't get me wrong, don't want to be evil, but you should have checked Veeam support "before" upgrading vSphere...

Luca.

[sdengscherz]

About uuid problem, there is a workaround, remove old hosts from Veeam licensing and register the updated ones. You would be anyway unsopported until 6.5.
Don't get me wrong, don't want to be evil, but you should have checked Veeam support "before" upgrading vSphere...

Luca.

About uuid - thanks - i've found the workaround somewhere hidden in the forums. Backup working again (unsupported)

Yeah you're completely right my mistake - but i guess i'm not the only one?

Regards

[Gav@GH]

Since my previous (technical) question seems to have been removed, let me just say that this is a terrible situation for Veeam.

Many companies, including my own, have been waiting for 5.1 to be released to take advantage of the new features and licensing options. The last thing you would expect to influence production depoyment decissions is the backup software.

NOT happy Veeam.

[Gostev]

Sure enough, somebody HAD to post something like this sooner or later, without even reading the topic. It is almost inevitable, always just a matter of time

At first, your question was not removed. It has nothing to deal with vSphere 5.1, and has been moved to the existing corresponding discussion about this issue Veeam 6 and ESXi 5 - SSH Failed To Connect. In future, kindly please search the forum before you post - this will save you a lot of time.

Also earlier in this topic, I have explained that all basic B&R 6.1 functionality (including all job types) work just fine on vSphere 5.1 based on our testing results. No official support, but the jobs should be running just fine (as many users have already indicated above too, anyway).

Now, regarding timely vSphere 5.1 support - as I've already explained on the first page, we would be more than happy to provide you with new vSphere version support right at GA - if VMware provided partners with RTM code at least 1-2 month in advance, like some other platform vendors do. However, instead VMware's standard practice is to provide RTM code to everyone on the same day. I am sure you understand that it is not realistic for us to implement and test new platform support in 1 day. So, think twice who you should be unhappy with. It's not like VMware does not realize that the ecosystem will not be ready, if they are given RTM code along with the actual customers?

Of course, we did have earlier access to beta and RC builds, however if you read this topic carefully, RTM code introduced new issues which did not exist in the final RC build, and we now have to work on addressing those. And, we also have to rollback code for workarounds around RC code issues that RTM build did resolve (to prevent unexpected effects). And after all that is done, we need to perform full regressive functionality testing against the RTM code. Untested code, you can use today if you want to (I am talking about using B&R 6.1 against vSphere 5.1) - but our commitment for official support requires certain procedures to be performed, and all product features supported (not just some of them).

As you can see, there is much work to be done for us after we get RTM code. And I must say, I have seen quite a few VMware releases in the past 5 years, but I've never seen THIS MANY changes between final RC and RTM build (where time difference between them was just a few weeks).

Finally, keep in mind that even VMware itself does not support vSphere 5.1 yet in some of their *most strategic* offerings, such as VMware View. And when even VMware does yet not provide vSphere 5.1 support (having direct access to all vSphere builds and plans), what do you expect from vendors receiving RTM code on the same day with yourself?

[Marc.H]

Hi,

I actually upgraded my 5.0 Infrastructure to 5.1 last week and I already tested the BETA before. Upgrading Vsphere to 5.1 has it's own tricks and treats but after having that up and running the only thing I needed to do is update the vcenter credentials in Veeam Backup and all my backups run fine. Also instant recovery and restores did work fine.

I only see one thing from time to time. During Backup one of my 7 ESXi Server do loose connectivity to vcenter and the vm's on this server cannot be backuped until I manually reconnect that host to vcenter.

Other than that I have a working backup and Veeam One monitoring up and running for vsphere 5.1

Regards
Marc

[JasonJoel]

After getting burned by '0 day' bugs in MULTIPLE VMware releases when installing right after release, there is NO WAY I would install a new release right when it comes out. Anyone who does it really playing with fire, in my opinion.

And Gostev is definitely correct on this one - 5.1 final changed a LOT of stuff from the RC. This really makes me uncomfortable that the final is really ready as there are a number of code changes/tweaks/etc that have not been tested in a wide audience yet.

Keeping my clusters reliable and whole is WAY more important than some neat new feature in 5.1. And back to a previous comment in this thread, the backup solution should ALWAYS be a top consideration before moving to any new platform - whether it is a new OS, VMware version, new hardware, etc. Treating disaster recovery as an afterthought is a good way to get burned...

Jason

[flakpyro]

Just to post a followup to my last question. Last week i rebuilt our vCenter server on version 5.1. (built a new clean VM, installed and pointed at the 5.0 databases and let the installer upgrade them.) I then upgraded our test lab to 5.1 but left everything running in production at 5.0U1. This will allow me to test 5.1 in our lab and ease into 5.1 in prod once Veeam 6.5 is out. Normal Veeam operations to the 5.0U1 servers seem to be working just fine via vCenter 5.1. Normal backup jobs seem to be working in the test lab but im fully prepared for advanced Veeam features to not work, thats why its in the Test environment after all.

[Gostev]

Thanks for coming back to post the update, David. Much appreciated!

[Matthias]

Hi @ll,

did anybody test B&R 6.1 against vCenter 5.1 _and_ ESXi 5.1 hosts?
I upgraded to vCenter 5.1 and afterwards I upgraded one ESX host to 5.1.
I moved some VMs to the 5.1 host.
My backup job fails. All VMs residing on the old ESX 4.1 hosts are successfully completed but the VMs residing on the ESX 5.1 host fail.

Error is:

[Soap] Execute failed('The object has already been deleted or has not been completely created')

That's strange.
The VMs ware vMotioned. So the UUID und VM-ID are the same!
In the Logfile I can see that B&R is talking to the right (5.1) ESX host...

Any hints?

Thanks!
Matthias

[Gostev]

did anybody test B&R 6.1 against vCenter 5.1 _and_ ESXi 5.1 hosts?

This is exactly how we tested. Your issue is not related to vSphere 5.1
Have you searched the forums for this error before posting?

[Berniebgf]

Matthias,

Your issue although not specifically related to 5.1 has been discussed many times on the forum, the issue seems to be caused when you upgrade or re-install VMware ESXi and use the same server name, or when you upgrade / re-install VirtualCenter and link to existing hosts.

There are a couple of ways to resolve this from what I have read.

Option 1.
1) Remove host from VCS
2) Rescan VCS in B&R
3) Remove old Host entry from Veeam DB (Hosts Table)
4) Rescan VCS in B&R
5) Install new host and add to VCS
6) Rescan VCS in B&R

Option 2.
Check for duplicate host entries in the Veeam DB
Removing the (Ghost / Old) hosts from the dbo.hosts tabled in the Veeam DataBase (Check which one to delete via the version info) and rescaning within the VBR.

Should help, let us know how you go.

Bernie.

[ptcruisergt]

Did I miss something? Veeam supports Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V now, but not vSphere 5.1 yet?

[Vitaliy S.]

Veeam supports Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V now

That is not true. Veeam does not support Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V in any generally available product at this time.

[b.stromberg]

A vSphere 5.1 compatible version would be nice by now ... I have some machines upgradet recently. all vms on that machines are not backed up yet.

[Gostev]

You can certainly back them up with the current version, as per my earlier comments all basic functionality works fine.

[Tobias_Elfstrom]

Using B&R 6.1 to backup a large number of vSphere 5.0's on vCenter 5.0 as well as a small number of vSphere 5.1 hosts on vCenter 5.1 and as stated before backup works just fine on 5.1 (It's only a few TB's of data so I can live with the basics restore only option), replication works great too and I use that as mean to have access too quick recovery for the most important VM's. That being said I won't go vSphere 5.1 on any main production sites until Veeam 6.5 comes out.