One of the solutions included in the Veeam suite and sometimes used “just” within Enterprise environments is the Veeam Enterprise Manager. The scope of this article is to offer an easy overview on the Veeam Enterprise Manager upgrade along with a series focused on very nice features and little gems. For those who are not familiar with this solution it is an intuitive and easy to use product for:
- Federating the install of multiple Veeam Backup & Replication servers
- Built-in Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and Self-Service Restores
- Access to Datalabs without providing admin access
- vCenter Plugin
- and lot more
Best of all the Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager (Veeam BEM) is included with the original Veeam license. Literally an unsung hero! Veeam BEM typically reads and uses data from the Veeam Backup and Replication and also the Veeam Cloud Connect. Due to this dependency when it comes down to upgrading multiple Veeam server components it is better to run the process in a specific order:
- Veeam Backup Enterprise Manager
- Veeam ONE
- Veeam Backup & Replication
- Veeam components like Backup Proxies and Repositories
- Additional components plugins like Storage Integrations, Nutanix Proxies
- Agents for Windows, Linux, AIX and Solaris
- Enterprise apps like RMAN and SAP HANA
Of course environments can be different and the purpose of this article is to cover the steps to run the Veeam Enterprise Manager upgrade.
Veeam Enterprise Manager upgrade v10
The same ISO image of Veeam Backup & Replication v10 ships the setup files for the equivalent Veeam Enterprise Manager upgrade. Best practice is to install the Veeam BEM into a separate machine. From a requirements point of view it is not resources hungry and generally speaking it a Web interface reading data from SQL database. Either local MSDE or full flag SQL are absolutely fine. In this case the installer (ISO) is running on a Veeam BEM v9.5. Goes without saying, it is always best to have a backup before running any in-place upgrade.
As a next step the installer will check for new prerequisites including the ones for the setup installer itself.
It only takes a few moments to upgrade the .NET Framework at least on version 4.7.2. For Servers not connected to the internet the required resources are already available in the ISO image file.
At this point everything is ready to accept the EULAs and progress with the upgrade process.
In this case the installer already detects the previous instance and captures the relative info. No need to start / stop any service. Next to proceed.
If a license file is available it is possible to provide this one now or on a later stage. This would be the same license file used the Veeam Backup & Replication. When providing the license file to Veeam BEM in fact, it is possible to use the one to distribute licenses to Veeam Backup servers in the network. By granting, revoking and even running quick export of the totals.
In case the server is still running on a previous version (for example 9.5) and the Veeam Enterprise Manager upgrade wizard will automatically download a new version with the same features. Pretty handy!
At this point the wizard is starting to collect the main info for the setup phase. In reality this is just a confirmation for the ones previously used. With the option to change them if required.
An important part of course is where to store the data. Both options are possible with either a built-in local MSDE SQL Database or pointing to a full SQL instance. MSDE SQL native limitation is growth size up to 10 GB. But generally speaking Veeam BEM database never reaches that size. On the other hand a full SQL instance allows for better performance and scalability for the databases. So it might make sense to either create or move to a full SQL instance. In this homelab the databases are running on a SQL cluster failover instance (FCI).
In this instance the wizard will connect to the detected database and upgrade the schema where appropriate keeping all data in place.
The wizard has now all the necessary info to proceed with the Veeam Enterprise Manager upgrade.
It takes a few moments to stop the necessary services, copy new binaries and restart the new services.
And a final screen showing the installation of the latest Veeam BEM v10 has completed successfully.
At this point everything is ready to visit the Veeam BEM GUI from the web browser.
And now the main dashboard showing summary details backup data and their status. In the next article a quick overview and first setup.
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