Failover Plan for Cloud Director

[EricinIT]

I've got two VCD instances which we do replication jobs between these instances. I've got replicas existing replica VMs and they all show as Ready in Veeam Backup and Replication. Veeam doesn't appear to allow Failover Plans to be created with these VCD vApp replicas though. When creating Veeam Backup and Replication Failover Plans, there's no option for vCloud Director unless it's a Cloud Connect tenant target. That is, doing Replication jobs VCD to VCD, there's no option to create a Failover Plan. Even selecting the VMware vSphere Failover Plan option with VCD replicas, it just shows 'no objects' are found.

Is there a method to create Cloud Director Failover Plans without using Cloud Connect?

Eric

[veremin]

Hi, Eric,

Could you please clarify your question a bit? What is your intended use for a failover plan for VCD replicas? Do you want to start machines within a single vApp in a specific sequence and with a specific timeout during failover, or do you want to do the same with the vApps themselves, starting them one by one with a certain delay?

Thanks!

[EricinIT]

Yes, we've got customers that we replicate VCD managed VMs between sites. Some of these customers have VMs that need to come up in specific orders. It would be nice to just have a Failover Plan with it all that preconfigured. I want to have VCD VM replicas boot in a order with preconfigured timeouts which is possible with VMware VMs (not managed by VCD) and Hyper-V VMs. If all the VMs in a vApp boot at the same time that's fine, but it would also be nice to be able to boot each VM in a vApp in an order specific order as well with a failover plan if that's possible.

Am I correct that the only way to have a Failover Plan for VCD replicas is through a Cloud Connect tenant? That is, it would be sourcing the VMware VM through vCenter (not VCD) and using the destination as a VCD Cloud Connect tenant.

Thanks,

Eric

[veremin]

Cloud Director replication operates on entire vApps rather than individual machines within them, so you cannot configure a Failover Plan for the machines inside.

However, as I understand it, you can set the VM boot order and boot timeout within the settings of the vApp itself (in the Cloud Director UI).

Thanks!

[EricinIT]

Ok, so VCD to VCD replication goes by vApp then. It seems the only way to get a Failover Plan with a vCloud destination then is to have a Cloud Connect VCD tenant as the destination. That does use a VMware VM as the source though. However, Cloud Connect does put them into a vApp on the destination VCD and it can still have a Failover Plan.

Eric

[veremin]

I'm still a bit unclear about the issue.

If you are currently using our Cloud Director Replication to replicate your clients' vApps from one server to another and want the machines within the vApp to start in a specific order and with a certain timeout during failover, you can configure this in the client vApp's settings.

Simply set the start order and start wait parameters in the source vApp settings and during replica vApp failover VMs inside it will be started in certain order and with certain timeout.

Or am I missing something here?

Thank you.

[EricinIT]

I get each vApp can have a boot order. The client doesn't have all their replicated VMs in one vApp though. There are 25 vApps and all the VMs have dependencies so going through 25 vApps is a lot to ensure the boot order is correct. A failover plan makes this easy because all the VMs can be preconfigured with a boot order and time offset.

Eric