Best way to failback

[rdickens]

We've been using 6.5 very successfully to backup AND to replicate to our DR site. We had a virus that got by AVG so I shut down our fileserver, failed over to the previous day's instance at our DR site, and then after dns settled down I restored a few files that people were missing between the last replication and failover. Everything is working very well, however I want to fail that VM back to my primary site.

I would like to go in to vsphere and delete the VM that has the virus, and then initiate a failback that copies the entire operating VM at my DR site back to here. Do I need to make the failover permanent, then create a reverse replication job and fail, or can I just delete the bad VM here and then tell Veeam to failback and it will copy then failover?

Is there a link to the best procedure?

Thanks!

[foggy]

Rick, you do not need to perform permanent failover as it will mean that you want to completely switch to the DR VM and let it act as the original. What you want to do is to perform a failback operation to recover the original VM back on the source (production) host. You do not even need to delete the original VM, it is safe to perform failback to the original location as Veeam Backup & Replication will transfer all the differences between the two VMs and restore the original VM to the (uninfected) state of the VM running currently in DR (also decreasing the recovery time and network traffic usage during failback operation).

You may want to review the corresponding user guide section (p.56) for better understanding.

[rdickens]

Before it occurred to me to fail over, I started a regular restore, but then cancelled it so I'm not sure the state of the original VM. Should I do a restore to like a last known good locally, then initiate the fail-back which will use the restored good VM as the base to make the fail-back server?

Thanks!

[foggy]

I don't think this is required as the differences (on the block level) between the two VMs will be calculated in any case and then the original VM will be synchronized with the replica. So you can simply fail back to what you currently have on the source.

[freddieleatham]

Can someone please help me understand the failback process before I try it out myself? NB We don't have vmotion.

For information, my process to activate the DR test will be:
1. intitate a Veeam failover at 6am on a Friday morning
2. If everything comes up satisfactorily, users will come to the DR site and work from there for the day. (If not, they can simply go to the production site as normal)
3. power down the production site.
4. at the end of the day, I will power down the DR site and then initate a failback

My questions:
1. Do I need to power down the DR site before initating the failback?
2. After the failback, do the updated production servers power back on?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Freddie,

1. No, you do not need to do that. Failback operation will automatically stop your VMs to transfer the latest changes back to the production site. See our User Guide (page 58, 252) for more details.
2. Yes, you can select a corresponding checkbox "Power on VM after restoring" to do that automatically.

Thanks!