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V12 IS HERE! Much like last year’s V11 Upgrade Center we are doing one for V12! Similar format and check back for updates, as we will have additional resources and I’ll get the latest information from the product management and support teams that should be relayed here. 

This text was last updated:   1-August 2023 (All subsequent updates in the Post-Publish Updates section)

Pre-Installation Section

Licensing

  • A valid universal license for V11 will work for V12, so if you’ve sorted that already you are good to go and that license will carry the same expiration date over to an upgraded Veeam Backup & Replication Server
  • You may need to obtain a license or ensure you have access to the licensing portal.
  • Note that if you do not have access to the licensing portal (including for your current license), such as if the person who used to do this is no longer in your organization, you can open a Licensing type of case:

Must-See Information

  • As listed in the What’s New Document, NAS backup to tape is a new capability. There is a small note to share, generally speaking the advice is to make sure that you do not make a NAS to disk backup job and a separate NAS to tape backup job; that would consume two licenses. See the text from What’s New below, with the underlined parts of most important. 
    NAS backup to tape — By popular demand, you can now use file share backups as a source for Backup to Tape jobs, thus enabling the classic Disk to Disk to Tape (D2D2T) backup approach for your enterprise NAS filers and file shares. To ensure recoverability at any point in time, this functionality exports files and folders to tape in the native format as opposed to copying blobs of the proprietary NOSQL database behind NAS backups. Since it’s a secondary backup, this functionality does not consume a license.
  • The “Transform previous backup chains into rollbacks" has been deprecated, see this Veeam KB: KB4390: Feature Deprecation: "Transform previous backup chains into rollbacks" (veeam.com)
  • VERY IMPORTANT:  If you are using a service from a Veeam Cloud Service Provider (VCSP), ensure that the service provider is ready for your upgrade. The Early Availability Release or RTM release, build #1402 will need a patch upon GA to go to build #1420. This patch is due later the week of GA, will update here soon. The Installer will warn you in advance, but it is essential you do not upgrade until the Provider informs you that they have upgraded, as this will impact all Cloud Connect functionality with that Provider adversely.
  • Updated 17-Feb: RTM Builds: If the RTM build (#1402) is in use - the GA .ISO build (#1420) will not upgrade to the GA build; please install the RTM to GA Patch: KB4415: Release Information for Veeam Backup & Replication 12 Day 0 Update
  • If cloud plug-ins are used… At GA the Veeam Backup for Google Cloud v4 plug-in is ready, the AWS and Azure plug-ins will be GA a few weeks after V12’s GA. (See Post-Publish Updates - AWS plug-in has taken an update).
  • If the orchestrator product is used… Soon after V12’s GA, we expect Veeam Recovery Orchestrator to GA with the new capabilities.
  • VMware vCloud Director 10.4 is supported with V12, replacing the previous hotfix workaround in this Veeam KB: KB4352: VMware Cloud Director 10.4 Compatibility Patches (veeam.com)
  • Over the coming days, watch the Veeam Ready list for any updates post-v12 for partner solutions that you may have of interest: https://www.veeam.com/alliance-partner-technical-programs.html?page=1

Upgrading an Installation to V12

  • From Veeam.com, clicking on Downloads, find the download for V12 that you want. I recommend downloading the “Veeam Data Platform — Advanced” bundle that includes Veeam Backup & Replication V12 and Veeam ONE V12
  • Before an upgrade, ensure your configuration backups are running, are successful, and you know how to get to that storage resource as well as an encryption password if used.
  • Before an upgrade, obtain your single-use credentials on Linux for the VHR if that is used (hardened repository).
  • Support has advised me throughout the RTM phase to ensure that a correct order of operations on an upgrade is followed:
    • First upgrades:  Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager, Veeam ONE
    • Second upgrade: Veeam Backup & Replication
    • Third upgrade: Remote components & agents

Post-Publish Updates

 

Upgrading to V12 Videos

We’ve created a few videos (four are planned) on upgrading to V12, and we’ll share these with some context. Before you do an upgrade, I recommend taking a backup of the components in play (an image-based backup) and also ensure the Veeam Configuration backup is running. You can also download Veeam Community Edition to make a backup of the key Veeam components completely out of band if you want.

Veeam ONE V12 Upgrade:  The first video is from @kirststoner12 on upgrading Veeam ONE to V12:
 

 

Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Upgrade: The second video is upgrading one of my environments from V11A to V12:

Veeam Backup & Replication Upgrade: The third video is upgrading one of my VBR servers from V11A to V12:

 

While my environment proceeded without issue, we realize not all environments will behave the same. If you need help, you can open a case at the Customer Portal.

Thanks for posting this...ended up watching the Weekly Recap, pointed me here, and roughly around when I was trying to upgrade from 1402 to 1420 and realizing that I need the Day 0 patch.

V12: RTM to GA Patch is out:

https://www.veeam.com/kb4415

V12: RTM to GA Patch is out:

https://www.veeam.com/kb4415

Woot woot!! 😎

This is really great @Rick Vanover !!! It should be a separate topic on the helpcenter!

Frankly, I have not understood the new “file to tape” license but have not researched extensively.

 

Right now I use the Community Edition and the 10 free instances are used up for Hyper-V and agent backups.

I have about 6 TB of data, VMs and agent backups which I store to tape using different jobs.

As a home user (aka hobbyist) I wonder which license I would have to acquire and how much this would cost me.

 

Thank you very much for any links.

VMs and agent backup files (and all other veeam backup files like NAS backups or VB365 backups) won‘t count against the new „FileToTape“ licensing requirement. They already are licensed by their source backup job.

If you only write such backup files to tape, your license consumption won‘t change with V12.

If you use a file to tape job with non-veeam backup files, you need to license this workload (500GB = 1 license).

 

If you still want to buy a license, I recommend to check out the prices for Veeam Data Platform Essentials. That‘s the entry license which includes Veeam One and Veeam Backup & Replication (max 50 workloads). 

Benefits are all Ent+ functionality like Object Storage and guaranteed support in case you face any issues with your backup environment.

But I understand this can be too expensive for a home lab.

Another option would be using an NFR license (20 workloads) for a homelab. You can get one if you are in one of the listed user groups:

https://go.veeam.com/free-nfr-veeam-availability-suite

 

 

Best,

Fabian

If I remember correct, then each 500GB of file data to tape consumes one license. And it has to be NAS file data, VM backups do not count to this.

The Veeam Essentials license should be the right one for you. You can buy packets of five licenses with a maximum of 50 (I hope the numbers are still correct with V12...)

Thank you very much.

I also do offsite backups for a friend of mine who works as an IT consultant, maybe he is in one of the categories for NFR.

If not, 75 EUR/year should be ok.

It‘s 75 € per workload.

6TB nas data requires 12 workloads. And then you also need to count your VMs and Agents.

We have special TB packages if you buy an essential license for vms/agents. Should be cheaper than a workload per 500GB. 


Best,

Fabian

TB packages?

NAS Capacity Pack
 

This are optional addon licenses when you already have a VUL essentials license.

Frankly, I have not understood the new “file to tape” license but have not researched extensively.

 

Right now I use the Community Edition and the 10 free instances are used up for Hyper-V and agent backups.

I have about 6 TB of data, VMs and agent backups which I store to tape using different jobs.

As a home user (aka hobbyist) I wonder which license I would have to acquire and how much this would cost me.

 

Thank you very much for any links.

Another thing I’d add @toko42  in addition to the Golden Comments from @Mildur  is that A) V12 has enhanced logic of NAS to tape and 😎 NAS to disk already exists. The enhanced logic is no longer free as it’s much smarter, so A and B are separate “data movers” and therefore consume VUL>

I have read about NAS to tape and disk but

  • Nowhere on all the “New Feature” pages is it listed that there’s a limitiation which has not been there since version 5 (I’m using the Community Edition for my home lab since 2011).
  • The per-workload-limitation is not communicated clearly, I found out in the prerequisites
  • even after asking here, the TB license add-on is only mentioned later and I have not been able to find it on the website of the larger resellers in Germany.
  • It seems that I can only buy a “Backup Essentials” License (which probably is still for V11) for about 400 Euros/year which is too expensive for a SOHO and the cause why I have used the community edition for so long.

So obviously the whole “workload license thing” is a lot more complicated than before.

I like to keep the systems separated from the data and do so in my backup strategy, also.

It seems that I can get around some limitations if I backup one of the VMs together with its data partition which makes a larger part of my backups but I will only find out AFTER having upgraded.

 

There should be a calculator of some kind:import configuration backup and the workloads show up at the end to make it easier before upgrading to calculate how many workloads you need.

Right now it seems that I have reached the end of my journey with Veem B&R.

 

Just getting to caught up on some of the recent v12 posts. As with the last Upgrade, this is a great resource @Rick Vanover . Thank you for the tedious and hard work of putting it all together. I’m going to dive deep into this and @vmJoe ‘s posts before I perform our upgrade here. Thanks again!

Cheers!

Fun fact:
I have asked for a quote using the contact function and nobody bothered to answer.

Fun fact:
I have asked for a quote using the contact function and nobody bothered to answer.

That’s not so fun - would you like me to find the right contact for you? If so - message me a DM or to rick.vanover@veeam.com.

Wow great updates here Rick.  Love the videos now that walk you through upgrades.

Just wanted to add that when downloading the Veeam B&R software an email is generated saying, ‘Thank you for downloading Veeam®️ Data Platform — Foundation Edition..’

Further down the email, there is a ‘Getting Started’ section: 

Screenshot from email with links to Veeam V12 related documentation

The Upgrade Center link takes you to V11 rather than V12

 

Also, once the upgrade to Veeam V12 has been completed, don’t forget to update any storage integration plug-ins :) 

Also, once the upgrade to Veeam V12 has been completed, don’t forget to update any storage integration plug-ins :) 

Otherwise, you will be prompted constantly about them.  😂

Just wanted to add that when downloading the Veeam B&R software an email is generated saying, ‘Thank you for downloading Veeam®️ Data Platform — Foundation Edition..’

Further down the email, there is a ‘Getting Started’ section: 

Screenshot from email with links to Veeam V12 related documentation

The Upgrade Center link takes you to V11 rather than V12

 

Thanks for this Dips - will get it fixed!

A question on upgrade sequence. I have a VM running Veeam One and Backup Enterprise Manager and a separate VM running VBR and SQL2016. I know I have to upgrade BEM first then VBR, but do I have to do them concurrently, ie one outage, stop all job, upgrade BEM, then upgrade VBR, test and restart jobs? Or can I upgrade BEM on one day and then VBR on a different day? 

A question on upgrade sequence. I have a VM running Veeam One and Backup Enterprise Manager and a separate VM running VBR and SQL2016. I know I have to upgrade BEM first then VBR, but do I have to do them concurrently, ie one outage, stop all job, upgrade BEM, then upgrade VBR, test and restart jobs? Or can I upgrade BEM on one day and then VBR on a different day? 

 

You can do it on different days. Have a look at the prerequisites here: Before You Begin - Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Guide

“To upgrade Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager to version 12, you must be running version 10a (build 10.0.1.4854) or later”

A question on upgrade sequence. I have a VM running Veeam One and Backup Enterprise Manager and a separate VM running VBR and SQL2016. I know I have to upgrade BEM first then VBR, but do I have to do them concurrently, ie one outage, stop all job, upgrade BEM, then upgrade VBR, test and restart jobs? Or can I upgrade BEM on one day and then VBR on a different day? 

 

You can do it on different days. Have a look at the prerequisites here: Before You Begin - Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Guide

“To upgrade Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager to version 12, you must be running version 10a (build 10.0.1.4854) or later”

Thanks for the quick reply, yes we’re on the latest v11 version so no excuse not to start the upgrade process!

A question on upgrade sequence. I have a VM running Veeam One and Backup Enterprise Manager and a separate VM running VBR and SQL2016. I know I have to upgrade BEM first then VBR, but do I have to do them concurrently, ie one outage, stop all job, upgrade BEM, then upgrade VBR, test and restart jobs? Or can I upgrade BEM on one day and then VBR on a different day? 

 

You can do it on different days. Have a look at the prerequisites here: Before You Begin - Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager Guide

“To upgrade Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager to version 12, you must be running version 10a (build 10.0.1.4854) or later”

Thanks for the quick reply, yes we’re on the latest v11 version so no excuse not to start the upgrade process!

No problem. Hope the upgrade goes well :)

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