Host-based backup of Microsoft Hyper-V VMs.
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keithhubner
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Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

Hi,

We have a DR site which we currently manually maintain ready to import data in the event our primary site fails. What I want to do is use Veeam and backup copies to bring this network up and test on a regular basis. Using a failover job to do this works well, I can failover within an isolated environment and manually test, the issue being that live backups won't work during failover. The other option is a sandbox and surebackup, however this doesn't allow we do use a backup copy as the source of the restore so data would be dragged from the production backup store (wouldn't work).

I assume others have this situation as it's pretty common, the business requires quarterly DR tests and so I am very keen to reduce the manual processing we currently have to do.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Keith
foggy
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by foggy »

Hi Keith, how about replica from backups that are already copied to the remote site via backup copy jobs? This will allow primary backups to run normally during failover.
keithhubner
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

Hi,

yeah I actually already do replicas as using these for the failover, the issue is the IP address change. I'm not sure if this could be scripted or something?
Keith
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by foggy »

Do you mean replica re-IP rules?
keithhubner
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

Yeah, I believe these only apply when initiating a failover task.
foggy
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by foggy »

Correct. Doesn't that allow you to perform what you're after?
keithhubner
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

Yes, but when a failover task is running current backups for those in failover don't run. I want to still take backups while testing DR.
foggy
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by foggy »

That's why I mentioned backup copy jobs. In this case local primary backups will not be affected, only backup copy jobs will wait for the tests to complete to perform their activity.
keithhubner
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

Yeah, but with backup copy jobs I can't change the IP addresses which I need to do. I could do this manually but I want to automate as much as I can.
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by foggy »

You can re-IP in replication jobs that use backups created by the backup copy jobs as a source: backup jobs -> backup copy jobs -> replication from backup copies.
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

As per this article:
https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... tml?ver=95

"Replica re-IP works only if you perform replica failover using Veeam Backup & Replication. If you power on a VM replica in some other way, for example, manually using Hyper-V Manager, re-IP rules will not be applied to it. "
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by foggy »

Yes, you will be able to perform failover of VMs that are replicated from the backups. Please review the link mentioned in my first post above.
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

Hi,
Yeah I have successfully done that, but, as I said before when using failover I can't take backups during failover, which I need to be able to do.
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by Vitaliy S. »

Let me chime in here.
keithhubner wrote:Yeah, but with backup copy jobs I can't change the IP addresses which I need to do. I could do this manually but I want to automate as much as I can.
This is not entirely correct. It doesn't matter if you're using backup copy jobs as a source for replication jobs or you're replicating VMs directly from production. During failover you will be able to do Re-IP.
keithhubner wrote:Yeah I have successfully done that, but, as I said before when using failover I can't take backups during failover, which I need to be able to do.
Can you please clarify that? You can definitely run backup jobs (regular) against production VMs. Failover with Re-IP should isolate DR VMs from production too, so there is no overlap. Should it resolve your issue? Sorry If missed some details from your posts.
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by keithhubner »

Hi,
When a job runs which has a vm which is currently "failed over" I get the error:
"Error: Cannot process the VM because the target VM state is failover".

I appreciate this is by design as in a real failover scenario you wouldn't want new copies overwriting those being used in a new live DR site.
foggy
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Re: Testing DR site

Post by foggy »

Are you getting this error in the backup job that backs up production VMs while you're failing over replica VMs created from the backup copy? This doesn't look expected, so I recommend contacting technical support with this.
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