Question about architecture: On-Prem to AWS plus failback

[ipro-bgardner]

I'm trying to wrap my head around how to architect this.

We have an environment consisting of many projects totaling hundreds of TB, all on-prem. Each project consists of a Windows file server, a MSSQL database possibly on a shared server, several compute VMs running Windows or Linux. Each project must be treated as a separate entity.

We have Veeam B&R 12 on-prem backing up to separate storage on the local network. We want to copy backups to AWS and be able to bring up VMs in AWS for DR.

Some research makes it look like we should have the B&R server in AWS, running backups via Veeam proxies on-prem. Seems like that would require a permanent VPN between on-prem and our AWS environment. Can we keep our B&R server on-prem and leverage Veeam Backup for AWS for running restores in AWS?

After the disaster condition is cleared in on-prem we will need to migrate projects back to the on-prem environment. Can we use Veeam Backup for AWS to back up systems running in AWS, copy the backups to on-prem, then restore in on-prem? Maybe there's a better way to do all this?

[Mildur]

Hello Brent

Can we keep our B&R server on-prem and leverage Veeam Backup for AWS for running restores in AWS?

Yes, that's possible. You can use a on-premise VBR server to do a direct restore from Amazon S3 to Amazon EC2. For the restore we will deploy a small helper appliance which reads the data from the Amazon S3 bucket. The appliance will then restore the data as an EB2 volume and attaches them to a VM.
You can read more about the process in our user guide: How Restore to Amazon EC2 Works

After the disaster condition is cleared in on-prem we will need to migrate projects back to the on-prem environment. Can we use Veeam Backup for AWS to back up systems running in AWS, copy the backups to on-prem, then restore in on-prem? Maybe there's a better way to do all this?

Yes, you can use Veeam Backup for AWS if you need to restore it as a On-Premise VM. You may also use Instant Recovery from the external repository without doing a copy first.

But if you have to restore the machine as a physical machine, you need to use our Veeam Agent to backup the EC2 VM. Only backups created by the Agent can be restored with our recovery media to physical machines.

Best,
Fabian