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Nbu8.1.1 and vCenter 7.0U1 managing ESXis at 6.7U3

RLeon
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

Hi all,

I'm stumped by this question I was asked by a customer.
I'm hoping someone here knows something from some release notes that could answer this.

The customer is still running NetBackup 8.1.1, and due to various reasons will not consider upgrading to 8.3 or 9.x anytime soon.
This Nbu 8.1.1 environment is currently handing the VMware backups of a vCenter 6.7U3 + ESXi 6.7U3 cluster.
This is fine according to the NetBackup version compatibility list.

Now, they are planning to upgrade vCenter to 7.0U1 this coming month but will leave the ESXis as 6.7U3 for some strange reasons again...
The question is:
Nbu8.1.1 does not support vC7.0U1 + ESXi7.0U1, but can it continue to work with vC7.0U1 + ESXi6.7U3?

Whether this is officially supported by Veritas is not important to them right now, they just want to know if VMware backups will continue to work.
I suppose I can spin up a lab to test this, but just thought I'd ask here first.

Thanks!

2 ACCEPTED SOLUTIONS

Accepted Solutions

pats_729
Level 6
Employee

Thats really weird... upgrading vCenter but not upgrading ESXi's and also not considering upgrade Backup solution.

Well... NBU can do backups/snapshot either via vcenter or esxi directly... all you need to do is... remove vcenter crednetials and add credentials for each esxi and modify all VMware policies (VIP) whereever vcenter name was used in query.

If VMs are selected manually then no need to modify policies.

View solution in original post

jnardello
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Please point out to them that for Veritas, "unsupported" generally means - "It might work. It might not. It probably won't cause anyone who looks at it to spontaneously combust. Your servers probably won't explode. Your data center probably won't suddenly spawn carnivorous goats. Since we haven't actually tested that code with those versions though, WE PROMISE NOTHING."
=)
So yeah, if they want to upgrade their VM environment to something Veritas doesn't support, Veritas promises nothing about what will happen. Including fun things like backups working but not restores, showing successful backups when nothing actually worked, or taking snapshots of each VM but never releasing them. 
Personally I have my doubts it will work (I'd guess it will fail at the initial authentication/query stage) but highly recommend you test things out in a lab to confirm. I also highly recommend you start immediately sending lots and lots of emails to the involved managers saying why this is a really bad idea and that you won't be held accountable for people deliberately deploying vendor-unsupported configurations, etc. 

Best of luck ! 

View solution in original post

4 REPLIES 4

pats_729
Level 6
Employee

Thats really weird... upgrading vCenter but not upgrading ESXi's and also not considering upgrade Backup solution.

Well... NBU can do backups/snapshot either via vcenter or esxi directly... all you need to do is... remove vcenter crednetials and add credentials for each esxi and modify all VMware policies (VIP) whereever vcenter name was used in query.

If VMs are selected manually then no need to modify policies.

jnardello
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP    Certified

Please point out to them that for Veritas, "unsupported" generally means - "It might work. It might not. It probably won't cause anyone who looks at it to spontaneously combust. Your servers probably won't explode. Your data center probably won't suddenly spawn carnivorous goats. Since we haven't actually tested that code with those versions though, WE PROMISE NOTHING."
=)
So yeah, if they want to upgrade their VM environment to something Veritas doesn't support, Veritas promises nothing about what will happen. Including fun things like backups working but not restores, showing successful backups when nothing actually worked, or taking snapshots of each VM but never releasing them. 
Personally I have my doubts it will work (I'd guess it will fail at the initial authentication/query stage) but highly recommend you test things out in a lab to confirm. I also highly recommend you start immediately sending lots and lots of emails to the involved managers saying why this is a really bad idea and that you won't be held accountable for people deliberately deploying vendor-unsupported configurations, etc. 

Best of luck ! 

RLeon
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

pats_729
Yes, connecting directly to each individual ESXi could be a potiential temporary solution if connecting to vCenter stops working, at least until they are willing to upgrade NetBackup. Will be a bit of a mess though, seeing how they have to stop using the VM query builder.

jnardello
I get where Veritas stands in a "support" situation in this scenario, so does the customer.
In some environments, inflexible corporate red tape just means you can't get any ball rolling. This customer still has FLASH dependent parts running their production applications, in 2021! *shudders*

RLeon
Moderator
Moderator
   VIP   

After going through the valley of the shadow of lab, I am happy to announce that Nbu8.1.1 works on vC7.0U1 + ESXi6.7U3.
That's all backup, vm-restore and file-restore tasks.

Going one step further, Nbu8.1.1 works even on vC7.0U1 + ESXi7.0U1.

Needless to say, don't try this at home, it's not officially supported! Upgrade your Nbu version!