What to do after a "disaster"

[dkeathii]

This weekend my company performed its disaster recovery test, which involved booting replicated VMs at our DR site. What do I need to do to put things back normal again, as I'm sure the replicated VMs were changed significantly by booting them. Can I just let Veeam continue replications as normal?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Daniel,

Could you tell me please if you have used Perform failover operation option available in Veeam Backup and Replication console? Cause in this case, we create a snapshot of the replicated VM before it boots up, this is made to protect original state of the replicated VM from user's changes, so your next incremental runs of this particular replication job are successfull.

As for how to put things back to normal, please use Undo previously performed failover option, in this case earlier created snapshot is deleted and replicated VM goes back to the initial state (the state that matches the original replica), so you could continue your replication job without any issues.

Hope I've answered your question.

Thank you.

[dkeathii]

Of course I didn't do that I thought about snapshotting them myself, but I didn't do that either It's not a big deal as I only had about a weeks worth of backups on that server anyways, I can just nuke them and start over.

[Vitaliy S.]

Daniel,

At least you've thought about that possibility (creating snapshots)
As for the current situation, yes, you should start replicaton jobs from scratch, however there's still a plus in your "disaster" tests, now you know how to act when your Veeam Backup and Replication VM as well as original VMs are down, you can start replicated VMs manually without any troubles.

Thank you.

[AJ83]

What is the correct procedure if you would like to keep the changes?

We have a colocation where we replicate certain VM`s to. When the main site would go down for a certain period. We would failover the VM`s to the Colocation. What is the correct procedure to get the main site up and running.. say.. 2 days later with the changes that were made at the failover site?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

Unfortunately, automated "failback" feature is not available in the current version and version 4.0 also, however it is high in our priorities list for replication. As a workaround you can create a new replication job to replicate your VM back, also for more info please have a look at the following topic discussing the ways of replicating changes back to the original VM:

http://www.veeam.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=510

Hope it helps.

Thank you.