Where to initiate replication

[mwpreston]

Hi All,

Question hopefully someone can answer....
Currently I have a Veeam B&R Server in our prod site which handles all of the replication jobs and replicates our VMs over to our DR site. I was hoping to use the Re-IP functionality, however after a little bit of reading it appears that the actual change of the IP is performed during a Veeam failover. My question is, what if my prod site crumbles to the ground? How can I initiate a failover? Is there a way to someone import the Re-IP info into my DR site? Or should I be setting these jobs up inside my DR instance of Veeam and managing them that way?

We initially set everything up in our prod site in order to run the offsite replication jobs after the nightly backups...

Thanks and let me know if you need any more info.....

[veremin]

For such scenario it might be worth deploying additional VB&R server at your DR site and letting it be responsible for only remote replication job. Thus, in disaster situation all functionality (Failover, Failback and etc.) can be performed by DR VBR Server itself without any issues.

In fact, it's considered to be the "best" practice.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[kjc3303]

My understanding is that if you replicate your Veeam VM (If it is a VM of course), when disaster strikes power on Veeam server manually via vmware change IP and then perform fail-over for other VMs.

This obviously saves on resources and licenses if an issue.

I will be testing this next week so will feed back if not confirmed by some of the veeam guys beforehand

Kev

[veremin]

Be aware that replicating Veeam Server to DR isn’t considered to be the best option.

As I’ve said previously, it’s strongly recommended for such scenarios as yours to leverage two Veeam servers: one in production environment, used for backup jobs, and another at the DR site for the replication jobs. Additionally, it might be worth installing Enterprise Manager to have visibility across two backup servers.

I’m not sure whether I completely understand what you’ve meant by resource saves, since in both of the cases, be it a replicating existing VB&R server, or adding a second VB&R server, one VM should be definitely deployed in DR site. Or am I missing something obvious?

Furthermore, there wouldn't be any issues related to the license due to the fact that Veaam Licensing concerns only with “source” host, so, there is no need for additional licencing of replication target host. And in case of failover, you can manually revoke licenses from the host that is down. Please see this sticky FAQ for more information regarding licensing.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.

[kjc3303]

Hi Vladimir, I meant MS licenses as you would have two servers running at the same time instead of one.

[veremin]

As far as I’m concerned, even in case of you replicating your VB&R server to DR site, MS licensing might be still an issue, unless you have Software Assurance, which allows cold backup servers to stay powered on for limited DR testing.

Here you can found an existing MS document regarding it.

Thanks.

[kjc3303]

Thanks, and thanks for the best practice above, will probably implement this.

Kev