Veeam Agent v5, install v4 (Linux/Ubuntu)

Veeam, in their infinite wisdom, release new server or workstation versions with every major release.

Veeam B&R v11 (Biggest Release Ever!) is no different.

However there is a massive gotcha, if you use a Service Provider for off premise Cloud Connect repositories.

When you install a new version of the Agent, it will only talk to the latest version of the Veeam Cloud Connect service. There is no backward compatibility. If you install Veeam agent v5 and your Service Provider is still at v10 then you get a message like….

Veeam repositories before v11.0.0.0 are not supported

Now V11 was only released GA on the 24th February (time of writing 26th Feb) , no provider worth its salt is going to upgrade an entire customer facing service at a zero day release. Indeed Veeam say to hold off the leading edge and wait a couple of weeks for the bugs to be ironed out….

But if you are wanting to set up a new server, and follow the instructions from Veeam then it will, by default, install the very latest release version.

That’s not ideal.

If you want to install a specific version then you can. You can either play with apt pinning. Or you can just install the version you need.

apt-get install veeamsnap=4.0.1.2365 veeam=4.0.1.2365

In this case, we want to install the v4 agent – which is compatible with v10 Veeam Cloud Connect

If you want to see what versions are available:

Veeam package depends on veeamsnap, and again it will by default want to install the latest version. So that is why you need to specify both veeam and veeamsnap versions in the command above.

Come on Veeam. Agents should compatible with more than one release version. Service Providers shouldn’t have to be telling customers to hold off upgrading or installing agents.