Failover Plan between Primary and DRS site

[mateusz.sobocinski]

So I have the following infrastructure:
Primary site with couple of VMs and Veeam Backup&Replication console which I can label for example Veeam1 for the description process.
Disaster Recovery site where are stored my replica VMs from primary site and second Veeam Backup&Replication which I can label Veeam2 which is installed in this DR site.

Veeam1 performs backups for my primary site VMs to storage located in this site. Additionally this Veeam performs Replicas of this VMs to the DR site. Why I configured Replica of my primary VMs on Veeam1? Because in this replica job i can configure to run this replica job immediately each time after backup job are completed. Now I have to configure failover plan. Unfortunately I don't want to configure Failover Plan on my Veeam1 because I can imagine the situation when my whole primary site goes down with Veeam1 too. So in such situation I don't have possibility to run Failover.

So the best way is to configure Failover on my Veeam2 which is located in DR site. But it is impossible, because this Veeam will not see my replica VMs state from primary site because this Replica VMs are performed by Veeam1.

I'm aware that I can of corse run replication of my primary VMs to DR site from Veeam2, but as I described earlier it is not preferred for me, because I can't trigger such replicas immediately each time after backup job.

Can You advice me if there is any solution for such problem? If something is not clear, feel free to ask me for details.

[veremin]

It's not possible to create replication failover plan on the second backup server, since the first backup server is in charge of replication activity.

However, may I ask you why not to stick solely to the second backup server and make it control both backup and replication jobs?

Thanks.

[mateusz.sobocinski]

Hi,

Many thanks for Your reply.

I consider such solution to perform backups of my primary VMs locally and replica externally to DR site when my Veeam2 is backup server for such process. But in this situation I relay every time on my connection between primary and DR site. It is of course dedicated link between sites, but I I can't rule out the failure of this connection for a couple of minutes or hours.

Now when my dedicated connection between both sites will fail I can still perform local backups of my primary VMs to local backup storage because Veeam1 which is located in the same place as my primary VMs performs it. In situation when I will perform this local backups with external Veeam2 located in DR site and in any situation when my dedicated connection will fail, even then I couldn't do this local backups.

Kr,
Mateusz

[foggy]

Do you do periodic Veeam B&R configuration backups? In case of DR, you could import the latest configuration in DR Veeam B&R instance and perform failover plans from there.

[jazzoberoi]

Hi Foggy, can we please add automatic and periodic 'VEEAM B&R Server Sync between Primary & DR' as a new feature request to cater to the scenario that mateusz mentioned.

It would make absolute sense if the VEEAM B&R Server located at the DR was fully aware that its performing the 'DR Role' and knows what backups (BCJ or Replica) it contains in its local repositories so in the event of a primary site failure, it can do the needful.

[foggy]

We can certainly add this as a feature request, however, I think you can script periodic configuration import through PowerShell even now.