vSphere 5.1 and Veeam B&R 6.1

[bteichner]

[UPDATE] Based on further vSphere 5.1 RTM testing results, B&R 6.1 will not officially support vSphere 5.1

Has anyone tried running Veeam B&R 6.1 against vSphere 5.1? I'm only seeing that vSphere 5.0 is supported by Veeam, but was just curious if anyone is running 5.1 yet. We are in the process of a VMware upgrade, and if we can upgrade direclty to 5.1 I would prefer to do that, rather than upgrade to 5.0 now and have to upgrade again to 5.1 once Veeam is officially supported.

[Gostev]

vSphere 5.1 is not released yet.

[Tallwood]

It's out next week and we are in a similar position so it would be good to know when it will be officially supported?

[sergeadam]

It's out in 5 days.

I have to Storage vMotion 2 large VMs, so I'm looking at installing pretty much as soon as it's out. But not if it's going to kill my backups.

So is B&R 6.1 compatible yet? You can't have us believe you have not been working with 5.1.

[Gostev]

Obviously, we will not know anything for sure until the final code is out, and we get a chance to perform full regression testing. Unfortunately, unlike Microsoft, VMware does not make RTM code available to partners early - we are only able to download, and start full testing the same day with everyone else.

I can say that beta versions of vSphere 5.1 did have some issues preventing some functionality from working correctly, but some of this could have been due to pre-release code as well. However, for now we are assuming that at least some parts of B&R 6.1 functionality will not work out of box with vSphere 5.1, meaning that B&R 6.1 will not officially support vSphere 5.1.

Of course, any modifications that will be required on our part to support vSphere 5.1 will be included in the upcoming 6.5 release (Q4 2012).

[Tallwood]

So assuming the scope of work involved in getting B&R 6.1 working with vsphere 5.1 isn't to extensive will a patch not be made available?

[sergeadam]

Can we be told what functionality is broken so we can decide to proceed with an upgrade or wait until 6.5?

[Gostev]

Tom, we will not provide the patch in any case, as such patch will take the same amount of time to prepare and release as including this into the actual 6.5 release.

Historically, the new platform support patches took about 2 months to release. Every vSphere platform update requires us to update VMware VDDK to the new version that supports it, and this touches the holy grail of our product - data processing engine. Because of that, lots of extensive testing is required to make sure the new VDDK code is stable. DR software simply cannot be rushed...

Serge, one issue we saw with the beta code were due to some changes around how vSphere 5.1 handles VMX file of running VM, which in turn causes backup to fail when trying to backup said VMX file.

[dellock6]

Take your time!!!

For my Backups I want a software I can trust and I know runs without problems. Veeam has never failed on this before, do not want Veeam claiming "hey we are the first ones to support vsphere 5.1" and then have a buggy software. I will stay comfortably on vSphere 5.0 until every piece of my environment are ready to be upgraded.

Also, have you considered other elements to check against the complete compatibility matrix? Server firmare, storage firmware, drivers, vApp, and others?

[Gostev]

More importantly than that, most people seem to be missing the fact that historically, multiple VMware releases had some sort of critical issue that required VMware to release a critical update, or even the new RTM build altogether. And it is not thing of the past - for example, this happened with their previous release, vSphere 5.0... so, it is never a good idea to jump the gun with new software releases anyway. Let someone else run into all those issues instead

By the way, this statement fully applies to any software, including our own.

[Tallwood]

I understand what your saying but I have a short window towards the end of October in and I have upgrade and i need to made a decision shortly as move to vsphere 5 or take the plunge to 5.1. I fully expect any critical issues that may arrive to be resolved by the time we upgrade and that our hosts and storage to be certified compatible. The issue I have is not knowing what the situation is with veeam support and nothing posted so far as been much help!

[kevinnaughton]

Tallwood. You'll be able to run with 5.0U1 of VMware and B&R 6.1 for quite awhile. If you need to plan now, I would plan for those since it's stable and the updates coming out are still an unknown. If you want to be bleeding edge, you'll have to settle for unanswered questions you'll have to answer yourself. Good luck.

[ipm]

Tallwood. You'll be able to run with 5.0U1 of VMware and B&R 6.1 for quite awhile. If you need to plan now, I would plan for those since it's stable and the updates coming out are still an unknown. If you want to be bleeding edge, you'll have to settle for unanswered questions you'll have to answer yourself. Good luck.

Agreed
Seriously, why would anyone install/buy the same day is released?

[Gostev]

Well, I guess it's all about risk/reward. Some people are ready to risk jumping new releases due to:
a) Release resolving major issues they are facing, or removing critical product limitations
b) New features or functionality being extremely important for some on-going project

[kevinnaughton]

Oh yes, there are definitely times you need to be on the edge. But you should understand exactly what that means and only go down that road if it's a necessity, not just to avoid future upgrades.

[Gostev]

So vSphere 5.1 has been made generally available today, as expected.
But according to my Twitter, first upgrade attempts are not successful

[Tallwood]

So vSphere 5.1 has been made generally available today, as expected.
But according to my Twitter, first upgrade attempts are not successful

Again any chance of posting something useful such as what does or doesnt work with B&R 6.1 and vsphere 5.1 now you have access to the relased product?

[tsightler]

It's been available for less than 24 hours, I can assure you that a full regression pass will take longer than that. It's unlikely that Veeam will make any announcement based on a simple "smoke test" since that would lead to people like yourself upgrading and then complaining when various untested things don't work. Veeam may seem like a pretty simple product (test backups, test restores), but there is a lot of functionality that would have to be tested (replication, re-IP, SureBackup, virtual labs, instant file level recovery, etc.)

People on this thread have posted very useful information ("you'll be able to run with 5.0U1 of VMware and B&R 6.1 for quite awhile. If you need to plan now, I would plan for those") you have simply elected to ignore it.

[sergeadam]

Gostev is right. I need to Storage vMotion 2 VMs to reformat a SAN. Right now the only thing holding me back is VEEAM. As soon as 6.5 is out, I'll be going to ESXi 5.1.

[ashleyw]

just to let you know... we set up a new vm - installed vcentre 5.1 in there - attached the database to our existing 5.0 database, went through the update all all looking good. Our backups are still running fine so far (they have just kicked off) with vcentre 5.1. Once we have a full backup run confirmed on Veeam, tomorrow we'll upgrade the ESXi hosts from 5.0 to 5.1 and re-run the backups and check everything works as expected.

Veeam monitor appears to be working ok with vcentre 5.1.

The only issue we've picked up so far is a domain trust that seems to be broken - probably due to changes in the single sign on service - but we'll look at this tomorrow morning - should be easy enough to fix.

As we run a large development lab (about 400 VMs), we cab take calculated risks from time to time - no pain, no gain!

[spoonwzd]

I can confirm ahsleyw's results above - Veeam backed up and replicated fine last night with vCenter v5.1 in the equation. Will try a VM tools / VM hardware and a host tonight!

[homerjnick]

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

[dellock6]

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...

[Gostev]

To a provide a quick update as our vSphere 5.1 compatibility testing is underway.

The biggest issue we have observed with vSphere 5.1 Beta and RC builds, that caused all jobs to outward fail, seems to be gone in the RTM build. Apparently, this was just a pre-release code bug... sad we spent time prototyping workarounds based on observing this in the final RC build.

However, we are already seeing issues with some advanced functionality, for example vPower-based features do not work. I will provide more complete list of issues as soon as the first round of testing completes.

Bottom line is, since we are already seeing issues, B&R 6.1 will not officially support vSphere 5.1. So, I do not recommend that anyone upgrades to vSphere 5.1 until B&R 6.5 is released. Unless you are fine about making your B&R deployment unsupported by Veeam

[Gostev]

We have completed the first round of testing (as we call it, smoke tests).

While all basic product functionality worked fine (all job types and basic restore options), we have found multiple issues with the advanced functionality, including:
• All vPower-based functionality does not work (Instant VM Recovery, SureBackup, U-AIR, On-Demand Sandbox)
• Multi-OS file level recovery (aka Linux FLR) does not work < this is the new issue that did not exist in the RC code
• Possible issues restoring backups made on vSphere 5.0 environment to vSphere 5.1 environment < this needs deeper investigation

Due to the presence of AT LEAST the above issues, B&R 6.1 will not be officially supported with vSphere 5.1.

I would like to stress that the above list is in no way exhaustive, but rather what quick smoke tests have revealed (full regressive testing takes a few weeks). However, since multiple issues are clearly present, we will NOT be performing any further testing of B&R 6.1 vs. vSphere 5.1, and instead will focus our efforts on B&R 6.5 release - which, in addition to all the new functionality, will include full vSphere 5.1 support.

We are aiming to make B&R 6.5 generally available in Q4 this year - as soon as we can.

[tholyoak]

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

I don't even see a good reason for us to upgrade from 4.1 to 5, actually.

[flakpyro]

We would like to start testing vSphere 5.1 in our test lab, however ESXi 5.1 requires vCenter 5.1, i was thinking i would upgrade vCenter but leave our production hosts at ESX 5.0U1 (This would allow me to install 5.1 in test) how does Veeam behave when communicating with vCenter 5.1 to a 5.0 host? vPower, FLR, etc still function?

I know we should technically have a second vCenter install just for the test lab but thats just not going to happen at this time.

[Gostev]

We did not test such combination.

[deduplicat3d]

I don't even see a good reason for us to upgrade from 4.1 to 5, actually.

It's the little things that count... before you know it, you'll be having a hell of a time upgrading 4 versions.

[hjerpe]

I don't even see a good reason for us to upgrade from 4.1 to 5, actually.

Server 2012, Windows 8