Use Veeam to keep offline test enviro up-to-date

[Zew]

Hey,

I noticed Veeam has a replication Job option to create replication jobs. Is this what I would use to keep my Test Environment (which doesn't have access to internet, and doesn't get updates via WSUS, cause it is segregated) up to date? So the idea is to keep the test environment at the same state as my production environment. We use this for big changes and certain service pack updates, before running them in our production VM's.

Let me know thanks! Love Veeam!

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello,

Yes, you can use replication jobs for that, however the main case for these type of job is to have offline copy of your production environment, so that you could spin up all mission-critical VMs very quickly.

If you want to test patches and other stuff, then I would suggest using on-demand sandbox functionality.

Thank you!

[Zew]

Thanks for the reply Vitaliy!

I'll look into that functionality, thanks for the additional info!

[DaveK]

Not sure if it is ok for me to sandbag on top of this topic. Sorry if not.

This sounds similar to what I'm looking to do. Our staging environment consists of roughly 16 VMs. I'm looking to have nightly replication that would then be available as a "template" our test team could spin up in an isolated environment to validate new feature and defect work.
1) We would need the ability to spin up multiple copies of this template so different scrum teams can validate without interrupting each other's work.
2) We need to script machine credential changes to that teams do not have the ability to make changes on the real staging system. What is available in this area?

Thanks in advance

Dave

[foggy]

1) We would need the ability to spin up multiple copies of this template so different scrum teams can validate without interrupting each other's work.

I'm not sure this is possible with replicas due to the way replica restore points are stored (native VMware snapshots). However in case of backups, you can fire up the same restore point in several virtual labs.

[Vitaliy S.]

1. You can setup a backup job that will use VM replica as a source. After that you should be able to use that backup by multiple teams.
2. Take a look at post job script to create/enable access account in the replicated VMs, might do the trick.