Closing DR site and Using Veaam\Azure to replace: Concept help needed.

[stormlight]

Hello all, we are closing down our physical DR site that holds Veeam replication jobs. We would like to move to a model where we only pay for what we are using when we need it.

The thought process is to do daily back ups of our Vmware VMs directly to Azure or back up the vms onsite and then replicate to Azure. If the handful of VMs we are backing up (that end up in Azure) are ever needed in a DR scenerio, we would perform the "Restore to Azure" feature. This would convert the VMs to an Azure VM format and allow us to work of them in Azure.

Questions:


1. Is there a better way spin up the replicated machines in Azure? For example, would it be better to place an ESXi host in Azure so that we could do an "instant recovery" with Veeam and ESXi? (Be nice to not have to but what ever works)

2. Where should one store these types of VMs in Azure? My limited understanding of Azure storage is that there are different blob, cold storage, and other data type tiers. Most of our Azure usage would be writing daily updates and turning these on should be very rare. Note, when they are spun up we would need to get external internet traffic to them. The goal here is daily, up to the date, server images that can be turned on and not any long term back up retention. We would be fine with only keeping that most recent 1-3 days worth of vm images as stale out of date is no use to us. (We will have a separate space for med to long term backups.)

3. Any other thoughts or suggestions.


Thank you all!

[ksims]

1. You'll want to create a 'DR' VM within Azure - We do this as a Windows 10 VM that runs Veeam B&R. Add your Azure storage blob to the repositories, so that B&R can see the restore files. Now, if you need to restore, you can 'Restore direct to Azure' from an Azure machine which will shorten your restore process significantly. At this point, you can also shut the Windows 10 VM down/deallocate it until you need it, meaning you won't be paying for a VM to run and not do anything.

2. Azure blob cold storage, imo. There's an 'Archive' tier but the process to get your data out is complicated compared to a non-archive tier, and costly ingress/egress. Blob cold storage is incredibly affordable storage costs, very low write-costs, and only mildly expensive retrieval costs - Meaning you'll pay some money to do a DR, but everything up to that point is very affordable.

[stormlight]

Thank you very much. Should it be a windows vm or should it be some type of Azure vm appliance I was reading about? I forgot one big question.

How do you get the Azure vm back on site to the ESX format? Is there a Azure to on premise restore that does this in reverse?

Thanks again.

[soncscy]

The appliance you're thinking of is Veeam's native Azure backup solution. You could use that or just an agent-based backup to restore back to on premises, but keep in mind Veeam's definition for "replication" is about a 1:1 replica of a virtual machine with a specific RTO/RPO, not simply a copy of a backup file.

For Veeam Replica, there is not an Azure => on-premises path, but there is a Backup Azure => on-premises path with either the Veeam Backup for Azure or just an agent based backup (Agent for Windows/Linux).

[soncscy]

>The thought process is to do daily back ups of our Vmware VMs directly to Azure or back up the vms onsite and then replicate to Azure.

Rereading this, I do wonder if your definition of replicate is the same as Veeam's though -- you might be talking about Backup Copy.

Give the Veeam user guide a read and check Backup Copy and Capacity Tier -- Capacity tier lets you keep copies of backups in Azure blob, and I get the impression this is what you're talking about. With such backups and ExpressRoute, it's a fast restore that stays in the Azure datacenter, so you don't need to have a VM instance lingering around on Azure until you absolutely need it, and this instance can be backed up later when you want to repatriate it to on-premises.

[ksims]

Another point to add to Soncscy -

The Veeam B&R for Azure appliance that is installed from the Azure marketplace does not connect to your SPC (If you're using the SPC) unless you have a VM running B&R, also in Azure - Atleast, that's my understanding after a call we had with some Veeam techs a few weeks back.

[stormlight]

I read the Veeam documentation, thank you.

So it sounds like I should back up the vms from the primary site to the Azure blob daily using capacity tier. When we need to spin up a server in the event of a disaster we would start an azure workstation with Veeam on it (maybe the Veaam azure appliance), scan the azure blob\capacity teir location, and then start restoring it with Veaam's direct restore to Azure feature? Correct?

That leads me to two questions.

1. If it has to be restored and converted into an Azure format can you use the Veaam replication feature and then choose to do a direct restore from the replication job?

2. Does a Veeam proxy help with backing up from the primary site to Azure blob in regards to bandwidth used, size, ect?


Thanks

[soncscy]

Hi JG,

1. If you are talking about a Replica Job, no, there is no path to Azure; Restore to Azure only works from Backups and Backup Copies.
2. Per the User Guide, yes https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backu ... ml?ver=110