Microsoft is making it easier for customers to back up and recover their VMware virtual servers using Azure Site Recovery (ASR), Hyper-V Recovery Manager, the company’s cloud-based disaster recovery (DR) product.
Azure Site Recovery, as part of Microsoft Operations Management Suite, enables you to gain control and manage your workloads no matter where they run—Azure, AWS, Windows Server, Linux, VMware or OpenStack,” Hemrajani explained.
This week, the company officially released enhanced VMware to Azure functionality. The feature addition allows companies to protect its on-premises, heterogeneous systems.
Built on the technology obtained as part of the InMage Systems acquisition, advantages include:
· Protection of physical Windows or Linux servers.
· Simple replication, failover, and recovery using the Azure Site Recovery portal.
· Data replication over the Internet, a site-to-site VPN connection, or over Azure ExpressRoute.
· Failback (restore) from Azure to an on-premises VMWare infrastructure.
· Simplified discovery of VMWare virtual machines.
· Multi VM consistency so that virtual machines and physical servers running specific workloads can be recovered together to a consistent data point.
· Recovery plans for simplified failover and recovery of workloads tiered over multiple machines.
On the management front, administrators can install the on-premises components of the product using Microsoft’s installer technology (MSI), allowing them to “configure replication to Azure in a few simple steps without incurring the cost and complexity that traditional replication solutions entail,” Hemrajani claimed. Another perk is non-disruptive recovery testing, he added. Users can test and validate VMware virtual machine failover to Azure within minutes without affecting production workloads.
Businesses can also use ExpressRoute, private, high-speed connections to the Azure cloud that bypass the public Internet, to failback after a disruption. “With ASR-integrated failback, start replicating your Azure virtual machines back to your on-premises ESXi environment, and failback to the original or an alternate location when your on-premises site is once again available for use.”
Azure Site Recovery Step by Step
Azure prerequisites
- You’ll need a Microsoft Azure account. You can start with a free trial.
- You’ll need an Azure storage account to store replicated data. The account needs geo-replication enabled. It should be in the same region as the Azure Site Recovery vault and be associated with the same subscription. Learn more about Azure storage.
- You’ll need an Azure virtual network so that Azure virtual machines will be connected to a network when you fail over from your primary site.
Hyper-V prerequisites
- In the source on-premises site you’ll need at least one server running Windows Server 2012 R2 with the Hyper-V role installed. This server should:
- Contain one or more virtual machines.
- Be connected to the Internet, either directly or via a proxy.
- Be running the fixes described in KB 2961977.
Provider and agent prerequisites
As part of Azure Site Recovery deployment you’ll install the Azure Site Recovery Provider and the Azure Recovery Services Agent on each Hyper-V server.
Step 1: Create a vault
Step 2: Create a Hyper-V site
Step 3: Install the Provider and agent
Install the Provider from the command line
As an alternative you can install the Azure Site Recovery Provider from the command line. You should use this method if you want to install the Provider on a computer running Windows Server Core 2012 R2. Run from the command line as follows:
1. Download the Provider installation file and registration key to a folder. For example C:ASR.
2. Run a command prompt as an Administrator and type:
C:WindowsSystem32> CD C:ASR
C:ASR> AzureSiteRecoveryProvider.exe /x:. /q
3. Then install the Provider by running:
C:ASR> setupdr.exe /i
4. Run the following to complete registration:
CD C:Program FilesMicrosoft Azure Site Recovery Provider
C:Program FilesMicrosoft Azure Site Recovery Provider> DRConfigurator.exe /r /Friendlyname <friendly name of the server> /Credentials EncryptionEnabled <full file name to save the encryption certificate>
Where parameters include:
· /Credentials: Specify the location of the registration key you downloaded.
· /FriendlyName: Specify a name to identify the Hyper-V host server. This name will appear in the portal
· /EncryptionEnabled: Optional. Specify whether you want to encrypt replica virtual machines in Azure (at rest encryption).
· /proxyAddress; /proxyport; /proxyUsername; /proxyPassword: Optional. Specify proxy parameters if you want to use a custom proxy, or your existing proxy requires authentication.
Step 4: Create an Azure storage account
Step 5: Create and configure protection groups
Step 6: Enable virtual machine protection
Step 7: Create a recovery plan
Step 8: Test the deployment
Credit : https://azure.microsoft.com/
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