replicating sbs without spare DC using hyper-v

[rwgs]

Hi, I am testing out a replication of sbs 2011 to another server, however I don't currently have another DC on the network.

is it wise to have one setup, does veeam require it, as it worked once, but the second time failed.

i am trying to test using a planned failover. if i setup a spare DC on the backup server, so that when sbs is shutdown, replicated and then transferred to the backup server, can i undo the failover or will that cause issues with AD replication? do I instead need to merge the changes back to primary hyper v server?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Robert,

You do not need to have a secondary DC available for Veeam backup server. How did it fail in the second time? Do you have application-aware image processing enabled for this VM?

On a side note, in order to do a failover you do not need to have a spare DC, you just need to have a connection to your target host in order to spin up the SBS VM.

Thanks!

[rwgs]

Hi, i tested this again, and it worked, so not sure why it failed the first time.

I have a separate issue though, in that the sbs will boot on the backup server, but seems to spend ages on "applying settings", and I end up having to force shut down and undo the failover. I can't access the event logs to see what might be wrong either, although have not tried booting into safe mode or anything.

I have AAIP enabled, however it is failing back to crash consistent instead - i have a case opened with Veeam support on this at the moment, but not sure if this is the cause of the server not booting fully, or if it's something else?

[Vitaliy S.]

Since this is an SBS VM, it can take some time to prepare DC for restore as well as other applications deployed on the server. AAIP is required to have a consistent state of the DC, Exchange and SQL server on this VM. Once you resolve this issue, try to do perform the failover operation once again. Thanks!

[rwgs]

I've tried this with the server shutdown and have realised that in fact it shuts down anyway before final replication when doing a planned failover, so the fact that AAIP isn't working must have nothing to do with this, and it's something else from the backup causing it to hang.

[Vitaliy S.]

Does it also happen during full replication? Do you use the same restore point every time?

[rwgs]

I've not actually tried that, only because it is over 600GB of data, and would need to all night to backup. It uses the most recent restore point, as the actual replication completes ok, with the exception of the AAIP working of course.

[Vitaliy S.]

Do you replicate within the same LAN? If possible I would create a new job and do tests in that job, while waiting for troubleshooting results of our team for the 1st job. BTW, what your support case ID?