Hey Checkyourlogs Fans,

Today we are going to chat about the fresh install of a Server that was running as a Veeam Backup/Replica Target at a customer. They didn’t want to do an in-place upgrade of the backup/replica target and decided to do a clean install. The steps below occurred after we reinstalled all the drivers and updated the firmware on the server.

The source Server was running 2012 R2 with a single Storage Spaces Standalone Storage Pool.


The above screenshot was our view of the storage pools post-reinstall of windows.

Here is a look at Get-Physicaldisk


I can see that the Storage Pool looks ok. Let’s try to take the next steps to bring the Storage Pool online.

The first step is to make the pool – Read/Write again by click Set Read-Write Access


Select the server and click Ok


The next step is to upgrade the Storage Pool to Server 2019.


Click ok on the Upgrading the storage pool enables new functionality but prevents earlier versions of Windows Server from managing the pool. You can’t reverse the upgrade. Are you sure you want to upgrade?


Next, attach the virtual disk


Click ok on the Virtual disk will be attached to Server Ghost01. Do you want to continue?


Next online the Volume


Here is a view of the volume online


One issue that we had was that the old volume was created with NTFS, so I will show the steps required to rebuild this with ReFS for Veeam + Deduplication.

We don’t care about the data so It was safe to blow it away.

I would like to have separated Virtual Disks in the pool.

I also noticed that the SSD Drives were not configured as Journal Disk.

So let’s start by removing the Virtual Disk and returning the space to the pool.


Now let’s add the SSD Drives as Journal Disks.


We do this by running as above.

Get-physicaldisk ata*

Get-physicaldisk ata* | set-physicaldisk -usage journal

Get-physicaldisk

I also noticed that one of the disks is set up as a Hot Spare and I want that to be part of the pool.


To make this change, we go back to PowerShell


As above the commands run to make this change are:

Get-physicaldisk

Get-physicaldisk | where-object -usage -eq “Hot Spare” | Set-Physicaldisk -usage AutoSelect

Get-physicaldisk

Now that that is done, we can re-create the standard Virtual Disks for a Veeam Backup / Replica Target.

Click Tasks, New Virtual Disk


On the Select, the storage pool window select Storage Pool 1 and click ok


On the New Virtual Disk Before you begin Window click Next


On the New Virtual Disk, Specify the Virtual Disk Name window type VeeamVD01 and click next


On the New Virtual Disk, Specify enclosure resiliency window, click next.


On the New Virtual Disk, Select the Storage Layout window select Mirror and click Next


On the New Virtual Disk, Configure the Resiliency settings select Three-Way Mirror and click Next.


On the New Virtual Disk, specify the Provisioning Type window select Fixed and click Next.


On the New Virtual Disk Specify the Size of the Virtual Disk window type 20 TB and click Next.


On the New Virtual Disk, Confirm Selections click Create


On the New, Virtual Disk View Results click Close


On the New Volume Before you Begin window, click Next.


On New, Virtual Wizard Select the Server and disk select Disk 14 (VeeamVD01) and click next.


On the New Volume Wizard Specify the size of the volume type 20 TB and click Next


On the New Volume Wizard Assign a Drive Letter or Folder type Q: and click next


On the New Volume Wizard, Select File system Settings change to ReFS and click Next


On the New Volume Wizard, Confirm selections click Create


Next, Add the Hyper-V and Deduplication Roles.


Next, we will build up the Hyper-V SET Switches

Using my script here :

https://github.com/dkawula/Operations/blob/master/Veeam/Veeam-BuildScriptforDataON5212-BackupandReplicaServer.ps1

Finish a Windows Update Pass and we have finished the clean installation of the Veeam Backup and Replica Target.

For our example, we decided to re-format using ReFS. This was not required, and we could have retained all of that data.

Thanks,


Dave