Making on-prem Veeam server available in DR

[mriesenbeck]

Hello,

We have a customer that want to be able to quickly get up and running in the DC once there is a DR, but they don't have any hardware prelocated there.

This is the current setup:

- Local Veeam B&R for local backups
- Backup Copies go to our DC to IMMU LX
- Veeam Config Backups go to our DC to non-IMMU LX

The idea is that when they have a DR, they rent hardware, bring that over to our DC, we hook it up and then install a new ESX onto that rented hardware. Once ESX is running they want to manually copy the on prem Veeam VM VMWare files (.vmx, .vmdk) to the storage of said rental server, add the machine to the inventory, so their Veeam server is up and running (probably in an older state, but that's no problem, since after that we restore the most recent configbackup file).

The issue I'm having is that I can do a VM Copy of the actual running Veeam on prem server, but that fails, since it cannot copy itself for some reason (and the problem is only with the disk holding the Veeam B&R program files, not with the OS or the DB disks).

So I figured, ok, then I make a VMWare clone of the on-prem Veeam server (to a new name and new GUID) and turn that off and then do a VM Copy. But it is still failing with "error in the application". AAP is off, the DR clone VM is off, so I have no clue why this is failing.

There is a case for this issue, but maybe you guys have a smarter way to have the Veeam server in vmware files format on the DR storage, so it can be easily be copied onto the rental ESX host, without having to first install Win19, SQL EXP, Veeam, restore config, etc. Maybe the Extract util? If I access a repo with a backup of the on prem Veeam server (backup and backup copy job of the running Veeam on prem server do work, interesting enough) from one of our Windows machines and then run the Extract Util, can I then see and copy the vmware vmx, vmdk, etc to the rental ESX by supplying ip adress and credentials?

Thanks in advance for whatever you can contribute.

Cheers,

Michael

[PetrM]

Hi Michael,

I see a big downside in the described plan: the necessity to wait for hardware readiness before proceed with DRP. One more thing which is not clear is how are they going to copy some files from production ESXi to DR if the original ESXi is unavailable?

I'd recommend to deploy DR infrastructure upfront so that they're able to spin up business-critical workloads with minimal downtime. Also, it's recommended to have the backup server on DR to ensure seamless failover and restore operations. If it's not an option, then you'll need to deploy Veeam server from scratch and install all components on it. However, I guess the time required for installing Veeam is negligible in comparison to preparation of new hardware on DR.

Thanks!

[mriesenbeck]

Hi,

There is no hardware from the customer in the DR (their choice). From our own Veeam server we can access the repo's to retrieve the needed backups/config backups/vm files and copy those onto a mobile storage device they will bring. They then copy the vmware veeam-vm files onto the rental server once esx is running, so they can start the actual restores. I just need to find a way to copy the on prem veeam-server files to the DC in order to be able to give them those vmware files.

I've decided to use the extract util for this, or at least I am going to try that now. That way I can give them the backups/config backups/vmware on-prem extracted files. They accepted the risk of having to wait for DR hardware, but once the ESX is running they want to swiftly start the restores.

Cheers,

Michael