Veeam B&R v6.1 and vSphere v5.1–hold off for a bit

Just saw an e-mail come through with the Veeam Community digest.  While I don’t have a link directly to that as a post to reference, there are two important bits of information:

Quoted from Gostev directly:

Our QC has finished smoke testing of B&R 6.1 against vSphere 5.1 RTM code, and based on the first results, version 6.1 will NOT officially support vSphere 5.1. In case you are wondering what B&R functionality specifically brakes after vSphere 5.1 upgrade, our quick testing uncovered at least the following problems. Note that there could be more issues – even in functionality that “seemed” to work – as this was not full regressive testing. Thus, please avoid upgrading to vSphere 5.1 until we release B&R 6.5, which we are aiming to make generally available later this year – really, as soon as we can.

Critical issue warning for those still on VMware ESX 4.1! You must update B&R with the latest build (6.1 patch 1b) before upgrading to the recently released ESX 4.1 Update 3, or all your jobs will start failing (refer to the Known Issues sticky for more details). There are no similar fixes available for previous B&R versions, meaning that if you are not on B&R 6.1 yet, you must upgrade B&R first. This is really something extraordinary – usually, VMware does great job with the maintenance updates – I don’t remember a single one that would break our products. Nevertheless, this once again shows how important it is to test EVERY update before applying into production (or, at least, not jump the update as soon as it is released – but let other people validate it, or run into any issues first).

So the key takeaways are:

If you are on Veeam B&R v6.1 and considering moving to vSphere v5.1 – hold off for a bit.  Likely until Veeam B&R v6.5 later this year.
http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=13397&start=15#p61987 (at least the following problems link from above)

If you are on Veeam B&R v6.1 and considering deploying vSphere v4.1 Update 3 which was just recently released, also hold off for a bit.
http://forums.veeam.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12207#p61785 (Known Issues link from above)

I have to say, Veeam’s communications and openness continues to impress me.  A lot of vendors would keep this information close, or tell folks that it must be something they’re doing that’s wrong, and pass the buck.  While some could read the above as Veeam having issues, I see it as them being a part of the community and sharing issues as soon as they’re aware of them.  This is part of the reason I really like dealing with them as a vendor!

It’s also worth sharing the additional detail shared, related to Synology:

I keep getting occasional inquiries on how my new and shiny Synology DS412+ is doing, so here it goes. In short, I have been extremely happy with performance, stability, noise level and functionality. But a few days ago, I became even happier, because Synology has released DSM 4.1 firmware update. Apart of many cool new features, they have added support for multiple additional VAAI primitives. Note how 412+ is the only mid-range NAS to get the full VMware VAAI support. I cannot be more happier with my choice! Really hoping they will add Microsoft ODX support soon, too. Heads up though – just like B&R 6.1, looks like DSM 4.1 does NOT support vSphere 5.1 yet.

This has been pretty big on the Twitter this last week, as many bloggers, vExperts, home labbers, etc, have this kind of equipment in their labs, and obviously, are affected by it.  Compounded moreso by how popular the equipment became when it was one of the first (only?) in this tier to have VAAI support at such a low entry price.

If anyone knows how to find a link to the Veeam Community Digest online, let me know as I’d really like to share a link directly to that, rather than cut/paste from e-mail.  Give credit directly to the source and all that.