Veeam Server Recovery and AWS

[thedon]

Hi, We are preparing for full disaster recovery by creating run-books for disaster scenarios. One scenario we want to prepare for is if our main datacenter went down. We use VMware and a virtual Veeam server. We back up a number of machines locally. We have a tape job that runs and backs up jobs to AWS. We have configured a virtual tape library and a storage gateway to AWS and have been backing up data for a bunch of months. If our data center goes down and we lose our main Vmware, storage and networking resources including our Veeam server, how do we recover if we want to recover machines at AWS as EC2 instances. Does Veeam have any documentation for this type of scenario.

[Gostev]

Hello!

No, Veeam does not have such documentation for solutions that involve 3rd party offerings such as object storage gateways.

We recommend using our native S3 integration (Capacity Tier), in which case the restore process is super simple:
1. Install Veeam Backup & Replication into an AWS EC2 instance.
2. Register the S3 bucket with your Veeam backups, and import backups from there (fast metadata-only operation).
3. Perform restore of machines stored in those backups as AWS EC2 instances (this is also the native Veeam functionality).

Thanks!

[thedon]

Thank you.

I thought the same as you but I did see that I left a piece of information out. We use the AWS storage in the form of a Virtual Tape Library and the storage gateway is provided by AWS to link to that VTL. I understand the basic S3 bucket should work cleaner. We are working on moving to that next. But we have the existing data on Virtual Tape. But I am thinking you already took that into account in your previous answer and it is still the same.

[Gostev]

Right... but perhaps there can be some third party blogs about this, more than likely.

In general, it should be pretty straightforward:
1. Install Veeam Backup & Replication into an AWS EC2 instance.
2. Deploy and configure VTL to use the S3 bucket with your existing data.
3. Register VTL in the Veeam console normally, just like a regular tape library (refer to our User's Guide).
4. Load virtual tapes into the VTL using its UI, and inventory them in the Veeam console. Repeat until all tapes are inventoried.
5. Perform restore from tape in the Veeam console normally (refer to our User's Guide).

Note that for 2 and 3, I made assumptions that your chosen VTL works the same way the only one VTL I ever touched works.