One of the many use cases for Veeam Backup & Replication is disaster recovery, as the name of the product suggests it can certainly replicate virtual machines from a production environment to a secondary- or disaster recovery environment. While it is a very straight forward process running through a wizard selecting source and target environments and the start replicating the VM cross the network, you can even have your virtual machines replicated to a Veeam Cloud & Service Provider, VCSP, if you don’t have a disaster recovery site of your own. The VCSP can have a hypervisor environment built for either Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware vSphere or VMware vCloud Director. VMware vCloud Director is VMware’s multi-tenant solution to host Infrastructure as a Service and purpose built specifically for Service Providers.
In this post I’m describing the process of replicating VMs to a VCSP using a feature of Veeam Backup & Replication called Cloud Connect, I’m not going through how to setup Cloud Connect. If you need more information about the ins and outs of Cloud Connect please visit Luca Dell’Oca’s webpage about Cloud Connect.
In the hosted environment at the VCSP you can power on virtual machines if needed to keep your business going if there’s a catastrophic event at your own site for instance a lengthy power outage, load shedding, you can even create a fail-over plan dictating which virtual machines should be powered on and in which order they should start, making sure everything starts in the correct order.
Replicating over the network may not be optimal in all scenarios, at least not the first initial full replication cycle. Let’s say you have a few very large virtual machines that you want to protect by sending them to a disaster recovery site hosted by your Veeam Cloud Service Provider but it’s too big to actually be transferred over the network within the available backup window, what do you do?
In Veeam Backup & Replication you can seed an initial copy of the virtual machine to your service provider using some sort of transportable solution. USB drives, Tapes or solutions of that nature – using “sneaker net”. The basic concept is to get a copy of the virtual machine to the service provider so they can import the VM to their environment and when you start replicating over the network you just send the changes made to the VM that has occurred since you made the copy of the VM. No need for a full transfer of the VM cross the network!
So the 3 basic steps that needs to be taken:
- Backup VM to a transportable storage device and send it to VCSP
- The VCSP imports the VM to the correct Org vDC in vCloud Director
- Set up a replication job at the customer site using the imported VM at the VSCP site as mapping VM
If the service provider has a multi-tenant virtualization layer, meaning built on VMware vCloud Director, the process is simple but has to been broken down into a few distinct steps. If you as a service provider are using VMware vCloud Director 9.7, these are the steps you take if the customer has Veem Backup & Replication installed that can be used:
Step 1 – Customer environment
Backup source VM (normal backup job or VeeamZip) to a portable storage solution. Either backup to C:\Backup and move the backupfile manually to the USB device or select “VeeamZIP…” and specify the target USB devices directly.
Step 2 – Customer environment
Step 3 – Customer environment
Step 4 – Customer environment
When the backup is completed it should be visible in the “Backups”-section in “Disk (VeeamZIP)”
Step 5 – Customer environment
Transfer the backupfile using a transportable storage solution (a USB drive can be used)
Step 6 – VCSP environment
Connect USB drive and import backup file to Veeam Backup & Replication running at the VCSP data center. Click “Import Backup” in the top section.
Step 7 – VCSP environment
Select the backupfile on the USB device and click “Open” (you may need to change the file type selector to “Backup files (*.vbk)” to see the backupfile.
Step 8 – VCSP environment
Now Veeam Backup & Replication will import the backup
Step 9 – VCSP environment
Right click the VM from the imported backup and select “Restore entire VM…”
Step 10 – VCSP environment
Step 11 – VCSP environment
Select “Restore to a new location, or with different settings”
Step 12 – VCSP environment
Click “Host…”
Step 13 – VCSP environment
Select a host or a cluster that is under vCloud Director management where the customer has a virtual datacenter (shows up as a resource source pool in the next few steps)
Step 14 – VCSP environment
Select the VM and click “Pool…”
Step 15 – VCSP environment
Select resource pool (Org vDC of the customer)
Step 16 – VCSP environment
Step 17 – VCSP environment
Step 18 – VCSP environment
Map network adapter to desired network in the Org vDC
Step 19 – VCSP environment
Step 20 – VCSP environment
Step 21 – VCSP environment
Step 22 – VCSP environment
Log on to vCloud Director using the flex UI (the HTML5 UI lacks the “import from vSphere” option.
If you as a service provider are using VMware vCloud Director 10 with the new HTML5 UI for providers, please note that “import from vSphere” is not available in the H5 UI. What’s even more annoying is that the flex UI has also been disable by default in vCD 10 so to be able to import the VM into the Org vDC of the customer you first need to enable the flex UI of vCD:
Enable the vCloud Director Web Console
Step 23 – VCSP environment
Import VM in vCD from vSphere
Step 24 – VCSP environment
Select “Move VM” and not “Copy VM” in Import wizard
Step 25 – VCSP environment
Step 26 – VCSP environment
Step 27 – Customer environment
Set up a new replication job at customer side
Step 28 – Customer environment
Select “Replica seeding (for low bandwidth DR sites)”
Step 29 – Customer environment
Select the source VM from the customer production hypervisor (the same used in step 1)
Step 30 – Customer environment
In the “Destination”-tab, for the “Host or cluster:”-selection. Choose “Cloud host…”
Step 31 – Customer environment
Select the Org vDC to use (same as in step 15)
Step 32 – Customer environment
Select vApp and Storage policy to be used
Step 33 – Customer environment
Select desired restore points to keep
Step 34 – Customer environment
Select desired replication mode
Step 35 – Customer environment
In the “Seeding”-tab. In the “Replica mapping” section. Select “Map replicas to exsiting VMs”, click on the VM and select edit.
Step 36 – Customer environment
Select the seeded VM from step 17
Step 37 – Customer environment
Step 38 – Customer environment
Set a desired replication schedule
Step 39 – Customer environment
If desired: Click “Run the job when I click Finish”
Click “Finish”
Step 40 – Customer environment
Verify that replication successfully finish
Step 41 – Customer environment
The replication job only transfers changed blocks since the backup/import was made
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