Upgrading to Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 1
After Veeam releases Update 1 for their Availability Suite 9.5 in January 2017 I decided that it is about time to upgrade my complete Veeam Availability Suite environment in my homelab. Currently I’m running the following components in my environment:
- Veeam Backup and Replication 9.0 Update 2 (9.0.0.1715) Management Server incl. the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
- Responsible for configuration but not used as proxy
- Veeam Backup and Replication Proxy
- Responsible for the backup (Direct NFS)
- Veeam ONE 9.0 (9.0.0.2062) incl. ONE Monitor, ONE Reporter and ONE Business View
- Database for Veeam Backup and Replication: SQL Server 2012 Express SP2 (11.0.5343) incl. Security Update KB3045321
- Database for Veeam ONE: SQL Server 2012 Express SP2 (11.0.5058)
Contents
But before we do the upgrade let me give you a quick overview of new features which are available in Update 1
Veeam Availability Suite 9.5 Update 1
Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5 Update 1
Platform support
- VMware vSphere 6.5 support
- VMware vSAN 6.5 support
- Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 2.0 Public beta support
- Veeam Agent for Linux 1.0 support
- HPE StoreOnce 3.15.1 support
- HPE 3PAR 3.2.2 MU3 support
- Dell EMC Data Domain OS 6.0 support
VMware vSphere 6.5 Support
- Encrypted VMs support
- VMFS6 support
- Virtual Hardware 13 support
- NBD Compression support (done through VDDK 6.5
- New guest interaction API support (switched from VIX API to vSphere API to leverage functions like application-aware processing)
- New VM Tag API support
VMware (general)
- Direct SAN transport improvements
- Restore without storage profile
- Restore logic improvements
- Broker service enhancements
Here you can find many more improvements.
Veeam ONE 9.5 Update 1
General
- VMware vSphere 6.5 support
- Asian locales support
Monitoring
- Memory demand for Hyper-V 2016 VMs
Reporting
- Enhanced Backup Custom Infrastructure report
- Enhanced VM Backup Status report
You can find more detailed information also here.
Upgrade existing SQL Server
Currently the Veeam enviroment is running on Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Express SP2.
To stay at a supported configuration, I decided to upgraded these components first because of the following 2 issues:
- The lifecycle matrix for SQL Server shows that the support end date for SP2 was Jan. 10th, 2017
- The database which comes with both products is SQL Server 2012 Express SP3
- Stop Services Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager and Veeam Backup Service on the Veeam Backup Management Server
- Install SQL Server 2012 SP3
- After the update is finished start the 2 services again.
On the Veeam ONE server it is the same procedure. The services, that needed to be stopped there are Veeam ONE Monitor Server and Veeam ONE Reporter Server.
After the update the SQL 2012 Server should have version 11.0.6020.
Upgrade Veeam ONE 9.0 to 9.5 Update 1
If you have integrated Veeam Backup and Replication into Veeam ONE then the first step in the upgrade process is to upgrade Veeam ONE to 9.5 Update 1.
On the Veeam ONE Server, mount the Veeam ONE 9.5 ISO image on the Server and select upgrade.
Accept license agreement and click Next.
The upgrade wizard will show you every component which is installed on the current server
Provide a valid license or switch to the Free license. A comparison between free vs. paid license can be found here.
During the System Configuration Check some components need to be updated.
After the installation of the missing or outdated components everything should complete with a “Passed”.
Provide the service account credentials which were used during the initial installation of Veeam ONE.
Check the SQL Server instance and select either Windows authentication or SQL authentication for connecting to the SQL Server.
Choose the Performance Cache folder. Performance cache is space on disk to which Veeam ONE stores real-time performance data, as this data is collected. Performance data stored in cache is used for Veeam ONE Monitor dashboards and views. Disk-based performance cache allows significantly decrease RAM utilization on the machine that runs the Veeam ONE Server component.
Select the Data Collection Mode. The Backup Data Only mode is recommended for users who want to focus on Veeam Backup & Replication monitoring and reporting, and do not need a deep visibility of the virtual infrastructure.
Just click Install and depending on the Veeam ONE database this will take some time.
Update 1 can be applied after Veeam ONE is successfully upgraded to 9.5.
Upgrade Veeam Backup and Replication 9.0 to 9.5 Update 1
After Veeam ONE upgrade to 9.5 Update 1 was successful I move to the Backup & Replication upgrade. First I stopped all Backup & Replication jobs and checked if all jobs were successfully the other day. Veeam Enterprise Manager must be upgraded first if it exists in the backup environment.
Upgrade Veeam Enterprise Manager
On the server where the Enterprise Manager is installed mount the Backup & Replication 9.5 ISO and start the upgrade wizard. In my case Enterprise Manager and Backup & Replication are on the same server so the installer give me only the option to upgrade Enterprise Manager first.
Accept the license agreement.
The Installation Wizard will show you the current installed version of the Enterprise Manager. You can upgrade to 9.5 when using either 9.0 (any update) or 8.0 Update 3.
Provide a valid license for Veeam Backup and Replication 9.5
The installer checks if all required components are installed on the server. In my case some were outdated or missing. In this case just click Install and the wizard will take care of everything else.
After the components install/update is finished, the wizard will re-run the check and everything should complete with a “Passed”.
Select either the LOCAL SYSTEM account which is the recommended approach or provide the service account credentials.
Check the SQL Server instance and select either Windows authentication or SQL authentication for connecting to the SQL Server.
The installation wizard will notice you that you will connect to the Enterprise Manager configuration database and if needed it will be automatically updated.
After clicking Install the wizard will upgrade the Veeam Enterprise Manager installation.
After some minutes the installation wizard finished successfully.
Upgrade Veeam Backup and Replication
The server needs to be restarted after Veeam Enterprise Manager was successfully upgraded. After the reboot I started the upgrade wizard again and this time I could upgrade Veeam Backup and Replication to 9.5.
Again accept the license agreement.
The installer will show you the current installed version of the Backup and Replication installation. You can upgrade to 9.5 when using either 9.0 (any update) or 8.0 Update 3.
You need to select a valid license here, ff you’re not using Veeam Enterprise Manager or you will be downgraded to the free version of Veeam Backup and Replication. If you have a Veeam Enteprise Manager running in your environment then the manager is responsible to deliver the right license to the backup host(s). You don’t need to select a license file here.
Provide the service account credentials which were used during the initial installation of Veeam Backup and Replicaion.
Check the SQL Server instance and select either Windows authentication or SQL authentication for connecting to the SQL Server.
Like with the Enterprise Manager the installation wizard will notice you that you will connect to the Veeam Backup and Replication configuration database and if needed it will be automatically updated.
After clicking Install the wizard will upgrade the Veeam Backup and Replication installation.
After some minutes the installation wizard finished successfully.
Update 1 can be installed after the upgrade to 9.5 successfully completes.
When I started the Backup and Replication Console for the first time and connected to the newly upgraded Backup and Replication server I got the information that some managed servers need to install an upgrade. Managed servers are including management server, proxy server and Windows Server acting as backup repository.
Depending on the size of the backup environment this upgrade can take some minutes to complete.
Conclusion
Upgrading Veeam components/products is the easiest thing you can image. I had never any issues and I’m using Veeam Backup and Replication since version 4.x or 5.x. If you stick to the requirements, prerequisites and upgrade sequence you will never have any problems.
For more information please check out the following links:
- Veeam ONE Deployment Guide
- User Guide for VMware vSphere
- Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Guide
- Veeam Backup & Replication v9 Best Practices
- User Guide for Microsoft Hyper-V