Continue backups after DR

[palw]

Hi All,

I'm currently working on our DR plan, looking at some options and wanted to see what other people do for this. This is our current setup:

We have a production and a DR site
All VM's are replicated to the DR site via a Veeam server at the DR site
We run nightly Veeam backups of the production site using a Veeam server at production to disk at the production location
A backup copy job copies backups from production to disk at the DR site for a secondary copy and retentions

What I'm trying to figure out is how we will continue to run regular backups in DR if we loose the production site. Can we use the backup copy jobs files and do incremental backups from them? Do we need to setup all of the backups again pointing to the DR vCenter?

Thank you

[veremin]

Can we use the backup copy jobs files and do incremental backups from them? Do we need to setup all of the backups again pointing to the DR vCenter?

You will be able to create new backup jobs and map them to files produced by backup copy jobs. However, initial cycle will be still a full one. Thanks.

[palw]

Thanks for the reply,

So with this option we will need to recreate all of the backups from the DR vCenter and have sufficient space on our backup copy job storage for an extra full

Any other options? Can we change something in our design to make this smoother? What do others do in this situation?

Our full backups are approx. 25TB.

[Shestakov]

Hello Paul,

So with this option we will need to recreate all of the backups from the DR vCenter and have sufficient space on our backup copy job storage for an extra full

Yes, Veeam backup tracks VMs via moref IDs, these IDs will be different for VM replicas, thus you will need to re-create backup jobs and have enough space to store new full backups of replicated VMs.
What you are doing is a best practice according to 3-2-1 backup rule.
What is your plan in a case of production site collapse? Do you want to restore production site VMs from DR disk backup copy files or via replication?

[palw]

Thanks, I'll do some testing using the copy job files for this.

We will use replicas to restore production. The copy jobs are mainly for keeping longer retentions, however we have a copy job for all backups even if its just a month.

[Shestakov]

It`s a good idea to copy backups outside of the production office. Your infrastructure looks stable.
Thank you for the participation. Keep sharing your experience.