Veeam Backup 9.5U4b: what’s new in the latest release

As of the 7th of July 2019 Veeam published the latest release of Veeam Backup & Replication. At the time of writing this is Veeam Backup 9.5u4b. It includes plenty of new features updates and resolves bug fixes as well. The list of updates as per usual is very long. In particular this upgrade is a cumulative update in addition to the features already added with the previous release based on Update 4a and Update 4.

The following is an extract from the original Veeam KB article:

Platform support

• Microsoft Windows 10 May 2019 Update and Microsoft Windows Server version 1903 support as guest VMs, and for the installation of Veeam Backup & Replication and its components.
• Microsoft Windows 10 May 2019 Update and Microsoft Windows Server version 1903 support by the Veeam Agent for Windows 3.0.2 (included in the update).
• Linux Kernel version 5.0 support by the updated Veeam Agent for Linux 3.0.2 (included in the update).
• Ubuntu 19.04, SLES 15 SP1, RHEL 8 and openSUSE Leap 15.1 distributions support in the Veeam Backup & Replication agent management functionality.
• VMware vCloud Director 9.7 compatibility at the existing Update 4 feature level.
• VMware vSphere 6.5 U3 readiness based on the pre-release build. The official support will still require the full regression testing performed on the generally available (GA) build. UPDATE: vSphere 6.5 U3 GA is officially supported with Update 4b.
• VMware vSphere 6.7 U3 readiness based on the pre-release build. The official support will still require the full regression testing performed on the generally available (GA) build. This record will be updated with further information and the official support statement based on results.

Application support

• Oracle 19c on Linux support for RMAN-based and OCI-based application-aware processing, redo log backup and Veeam Explorer for Oracle in most configurations. Due to the recent availability of Oracle 19c, testing of DataGuard and RAC configurations is still being performed. This record will be updated with further information and the official support statement based on results.
• Oracle 19c on Windows support for RMAN-based and OCI-based application-aware processing, redo log backup and Veeam Explorer for Oracle in basic configurations only. Due to the most recent availability of Oracle 19c for Windows, testing of advanced configurations (DataGuard, RAC, ASM, Pluggable DB, flashback, virtual accounts) is still to be performed. At the time of writing ASM, Pluggable DB, flashback and virtual accounts are officially supported with Update 4b.

Cloud integrations

• Veeam Backup & Replication will now periodically update the list of supported Amazon AWS regions from the Veeam update server. The list will be updated as Veeam QC validates compatibility with the newly added Amazon region. This functionality requires the automatic product update check via the existing Check for product and hypervisor updates periodically check box in the Notification settings.

Storage integrations

• Dell EMC Unity OE version 4.5 support.
• The proprietary NFS client has been updated for compatibility with the Western Digital IntelliFlash (formerly Tegile) Universal Storage API plug-in. The plug-in will be made generally available along with the Update 4b release.

Veeam Backup 9.5U4b upgrade process

The Veeam Backup 9.5u4b upgrade process is very straight forward and not different from the previous ones. All it requires is to extract the content from the update file and execute it on the Veeam Backup & Replication Server. Before proceeding a Backup of the Veeam Configuration Database is recommended. In addition stopping running jobs (eg. SQL and Oracle Transaction Logs Backups) will speed up the procedure. The wizard will detect for any running job before progressing with the update.

As soon as the wizard verifies the components it will proceed with the actual installation by stopping, protect configuration files, copy the new ones and restart all the services automatically. It is also possible to include the update of the additional components. In such cases the personal preference would be to not include this setting and then choose which components running on additional servers to upgrade. For example some of them might not be running or reachable. Especially in large distributed environments.

A few minutes later the upgrade step to Veeam Backup 9.5u4b has completed. It might take a few seconds more on the first splash screen to reconnect the Veeam Services to the SQL instance.

As soon as the new console is running and depending on previous selection it is now possible which components to update on the Veeam Backup Infrastructure.