protect VBR with ASR, any comment ?

[lowlander]

Hi,

I am reviewing possible scenario's to let Veeam adapt to Azure Site Recovery. An on premise Veeam configuration consist of an ASR protected VBR server with a physical SOBR. This physical SOBR has a capacity tier to object storage.

In case of emergency you just failover the VBR virtual machine ( and the rest of the workload ) to Azure. Having this said the local SOBR that connects to object storage will be replaced with an Azure virtual machine that is configured as an empty SOBR. By connecting the object storage to this new SOBR in Azure, we can reconnect the capacity tier and possible recover data from archived backups in the capacity tier. Is it also possible to restore complete virtual machines into Azure.

Veeam for Microsoft Azure can then be deployed form the marketplace to protect the Azure environment.

I think a nice step to workload mobility and good use of universal licenses, but : is this a validated solution / any comment ?

thanks !

[Gostev]

Hi there. Personally I think it's not worth the effort. It's too easy to install Veeam in Azure as needed, and just import backups from object storage. There's no need to have SOBR in Azure for that. Thanks!

[oleg.feoktistov]

Hi @lowlander,

Agree with Gostev here. As far as I see, Azure Site Recovery keeps replicated data in azure storage and creates Azure VM only in the event of failover, but you're still charged for storing data in the cloud meanwhile. May be easier to deploy VBR in Azure on-demand.

Thanks,
Oleg

[lowlander]

Good one,

I agree this should be the best option. When restoring from this Azure VBR : I guess we have to configure the object storage in a SOBR. Do we need a capacity tier in this SOBR ?

[oleg.feoktistov]

No need. Just import backups right from object storage and restore. As simple as that. May our Restore Scenarios guide be with you.
Thanks!

[Gostev]

I guess we have to configure the object storage in a SOBR

No... in my first response above, I specifically mentioned you do NOT need SOBR at all.

To make it absolutely clear, here's the complete step by step guide for your DR scenario:
1. Download and install Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition (no need to search for a license file).
2. Create an object storage repository pointing to the container with your backups.
3. Import backups from object storage repository.

That's it! At this point, you can perform any type of restores from imported backups normally, including direct restore to Azure VMs.

[lowlander]

Hi thanks for that.

Can we create an object storage repository pointing to the same container that is used by the SOBR, without impacting the onprem config ? This in case we only have to failover a part of the infrastructure.

[lowlander]

I did a test with a fresh install of the community edition of VBR on seperate environment then the VBR install on the onpremise installation ( as if it was in Azure )

From there you can add an Object Storage repository and refer to the bucket where backups are stored. Having this object storage repository visible, you then can import backups. Starting the import job results in a synchronization of the back-ups that took about an hour for 40 TB. From there you can perform restore actions. Regarding the production site also making use of this Object storage ( but then in a SOBR configuration ), offload jobs can still perform the offload to object storage when a back-up is being executed.

Using ASR I think installing Veeam Backup for Azure within Azure is a no brainer. Installing this in your Azure environment, you can attach the object storage that is being used with the on premises installation that is using the same object storage as capacity tier in a SOBR. With this being said, access to backups that are being made in the past are available in Azure without the possible wait for a sync of 1 hour

Is the above train of thought correct, or am I missing something to take into account ?

[Gostev]

I am not sure if Veeam Backup for Azure can do much with backups created by Veeam Backup & Replication, at least in the current version 1. If this was your train of thought, then you may want to start a thread regarding this scenario in the Veeam Backup for Azure sub-forum to get more in-depth comments from its PMs.