What do you want in a "How to upgrade" guide?

  • 5 February 2021
  • 9 comments
  • 121 views

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

One of the things that I will be doing, starting with the v11 release, is preparing a “How to upgrade” Blog and Video situation that I will post here in the Veeam Community site.  This will be an exclusive resource you will only get here!

Now just to be clear, this post will be straight blocking and tackling, it’s not going to cover what’s new, it’s for the person who has a previous version and is ready to upgrade. Here’s my loose agenda of what I plan on covering:

  • Pre-Steps
  • Key documentation to review
  • Licensing and Product
    • How to get license updated, steps to secure license admin/access
    • How and where to download the product(s)
  • Must-See Information
    • Noting key changes/dropped platforms
      • Known issues
      • Key advice from Veeam Tech Support
      • Common Case Summary thru RTM
    • Note scenarios where “If you are using _X_ existing capability, it will be new this way: See this”
    • Configuration Backup - Verify it is done, where it is, etc.
  • Upgrade and Beyond
    • Information of doing the upgrade (Possibly a video of me doing it in lab)
    • After the install
      • How to use the new features if needs covered/’must see’
      • Information on if you need to open a case, how-to, etc.

 

Keep in mind not all products will have this same outline, I’m trying to account for many scenarios. 

My questions to you are:
 

  1. Do you see this would be helpful?
  2. Is there something missing?
  3. Is there an upgrade piece of advice you would share/something you do that I can incorporate as a recommendation?

9 comments

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

One of the things that I will be doing, starting with the v11 release, is preparing a “How to upgrade” Blog and Video situation that I will post here in the Veeam Community site.  This will be an exclusive resource you will only get here!

Now just to be clear, this post will be straight blocking and tackling, it’s not going to cover what’s new, it’s for the person who has a previous version and is ready to upgrade. Here’s my loose agenda of what I plan on covering:

  • Pre-Steps
  • Key documentation to review
  • Licensing and Product
    • How to get license updated, steps to secure license admin/access
    • How and where to download the product(s)
  • Must-See Information
    • Noting key changes/dropped platforms
      • Known issues
      • Key advice from Veeam Tech Support
      • Common Case Summary thru RTM
    • Note scenarios where “If you are using _X_ existing capability, it will be new this way: See this”
    • Configuration Backup - Verify it is done, where it is, etc.
  • Upgrade and Beyond
    • Information of doing the upgrade (Possibly a video of me doing it in lab)
    • After the install
      • How to use the new features if needs covered/’must see’
      • Information on if you need to open a case, how-to, etc.

 

Keep in mind not all products will have this same outline, I’m trying to account for many scenarios. 

My questions to you are:
 

  1. Do you see this would be helpful?
  2. Is there something missing?
  3. Is there an upgrade piece of advice you would share/something you do that I can incorporate as a recommendation?

100% this would be useful. As these products grow and their complexity inevitably increases it is good to have direct insights and a known good “template” (your upgrade video) to run against. When v10 came out, of the first 5 upgrades from 9.5u4 to 10 performed at my organisation, 3 of them failed and required manual remediation or support requests from Veeam’s technical support. But three different VMCE’s carried them out so the stability of the upgrade was questioned instead of if the engineers had carried it out in a “wrong” way. This will definitely help eliminate that confusion.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

This guide is absolutely useful. The product has more and more features, so it gets more complicated.

Your idea to cover scenarios with different combinations of capabilities in your guide (or series of guides 😀) will help a lot.

Userlevel 7
Badge +13

Would of course be helpful! Especially known issues provided by support would be great!

Userlevel 7
Badge +13
  • Must-See Information
    • Noting key changes/dropped platforms
      • Known issues
      • Key advice from Veeam Tech Support
      • Common Case Summary thru RTM

 

The guide and especially these points will be very valuable for everyone upgrading to a newer release.

 

Userlevel 6
Badge +1

To have it in a form of a demo in a video would be awesome!

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

Thanks everyone for the feedback - I was thinking about including a video of going thru the upgrade in my lab.

Here is an example of one we did for v10 (external platform), but nonetheless an upgrade. Would that help?

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

This is a good basic video for an update without problems… :grin:

I think the interesting part is what to do when there gets something wrong.
Another topic would be for me do you have to remember or prepare something when you have e.g. a tape environment connected or a cloud tier or ...

Userlevel 7
Badge +10

@JMeixner  - hard to pick something where it may go wrong and put it in a video. But that’s where the “top issues from support thru the RTM” would be a nice recap, links to some KB’s etc.

I did think of one more thing to add → Answering the question of “Do I have to pay for this upgrade?” This was asked quite a bit today via an email campaign. The Email team sent a mass mailer from me, and I explicitly asked for it to be FROM me (ACTUALLY INDEED FROM ME). 

The reason why is some really genuine questions are asked, and this was asked twice about the v11 upgrade “do I have to pay for it?” - so it makes sense to incorporate this into the session.

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Thanks everyone for the feedback - I was thinking about including a video of going thru the upgrade in my lab.

Here is an example of one we did for v10 (external platform), but nonetheless an upgrade. Would that help?

 

Hi Rick,

I have updated at least 15 Veem server 9.5 U4 to Veeam 10 latest release.
Each Veeam infrastructure was different, two infrastructures also included a Veeam Cloud Connect, I never encountered any problems during the upgrade, luck?

my steps to upgrade:
- Check the prerequisites for the new version.
- License: check compatible with new version 10.
- Native MSSQL backup.
- Backup all Veeam server role except proxy \ Repository
- Shutdown of all servers of the infra Veeam, cold snapshot.
- Upgrade Veeam 10
- Control of backups and replicas and / or erors on eventviewer
- After 24, if the infrastructure does not present problems, snapshot cancellation.

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