Move VM between vCenter and keep backup chain

[GabesVirtualWorld]

Hi,
Customer want's to perform a full DR test of their VMware environment. VMs in vCenter A are all backed-up with VEEAM. Our DR scenario would be to stop all VMs, stop the storage replication on the array, promote the VMFS volumes in vCenter B to be writeable, register the VMs from the VMFS volumes and then power them on. We've done this many times, all scripted and works without issues.

The difference now is that the customer wants to run on the DR site for a few days, where we normally would revert back the same day after successful testing. That means, I now have to backup those VMs while running in vCenter B. If vCenter A and vCenter B have both been added to the same VEEAM B&R, will VEEAM find the VM regardless of being in A or B and continue the backup? I don't want to trigger new full backups. Or will I have to re-add all VMs in the backup job but will they still continue their previous backup chain?

[Andreas Neufert]

When you add VMs to the Veeam Job, we work in the background with vCenter moref Ids, which allow us to identify a unique VM. To avoid that someone rename a VM to same name and would harm that way our processing. When you register a VM again to the same vcenter or to another vcenter this ID changes and for us it is a new VM. You need to add this VM to a new job => New Full with new backup chain for this VM.

There is maybe a way that our support can help you with matching the moREF IDs in the background by the VM names. Please open a support ticket to discuss this option.

Overall Veeam has multiple options to help you with this process and automate things or tests. The Veeam Availability Orchestrator Software was created exactly for this purpose. NetApp ONTAP is the first storage system where we can orchestrate the site failover for the storage replication. Included are various site failover tests that can be performed automatically. Or you can just do a planned failover and failback. The software can as well automate the Veeam backup after failover.

There are additional options if you use our Storage integrations. If you can create storage snapshots on the second site (non Veeam orchestrated is as well possilbe) you can use them with our SureBackup option to start the second site more frequently in a lab envionment which would allow you to test if the applications come up and the second site would come up completely.

[GabesVirtualWorld]

Thank you for the quick reply.

Was afraid of the moREF IDs indeed. But had dispute about that with my colleague.

We're running on Pure storage, is that an option for VEEAM Availability Orchestrator?

[Andreas Neufert]

Not in the actual version. But you can use the storage snapshot integration for the labs.