Setting up disaster recovery with Azure VM Backup

Posted on by Panther

Disaster recovery is critical for any organization that is dependent on IT infrastructure. Data loss or system downtime can lead to significant business disruption, lost revenue, and damage to your reputation. Disaster recovery is a set of processes and technologies that enable the recovery of IT infrastructure after a disruptive event. One of the most popular cloud-based disaster recovery solutions is Azure VM Backup. In this tutorial, we will walk you through the process of setting up a disaster recovery solution with Azure VM Backup.

Prerequisites

To follow this tutorial, you need to have the following prerequisites:
– An Azure subscription
– A virtual machine (VM) running in Azure
– Access to the Azure portal
– The Azure Backup extension installed on your VM

Step 1: Create a Recovery Services vault

The first step in setting up a disaster recovery solution with Azure VM backup is to create a Recovery Services vault. A Recovery Services vault is a logical container that stores your backups and recovery points. Here’s how to create a Recovery Services vault:

  1. Open the Azure portal and navigate to the “Recovery Services vaults” tab.

  2. Click on the “Add” button to create a new Recovery Services vault.

  3. In the “Basics” tab, enter a unique name for your Recovery Services vault and select your Azure subscription and resource group.

  4. In the “Storage replication” tab, select the replication type for your backups. You can choose between locally redundant storage (LRS) or geo-redundant storage (GRS).

  5. In the “Backup” tab, select the backup goal for your virtual machines. You can choose between backup and site recovery. For this tutorial, we will select site recovery.

  6. Click on the “Create” button to create your Recovery Services vault.

Step 2: Configure Site Recovery

Site Recovery is a disaster recovery solution that enables the replication of virtual machines from a primary site to

a secondary site. In this step, we will configure Site Recovery to replicate our virtual machine.

  1. Open your Recovery Services vault and navigate to the “Site Recovery” tab.

  2. Click on the “Prepare Infrastructure” button to configure Site Recovery.

  3. In the “Prepare source” tab, select your source location and the virtual machine you want to replicate.

  4. In the “Prepare target” tab, select your target location. You can choose between an Azure data center, a service provider, or your own data center.

  5. In the “Network mapping” tab, map the networks of your source and target environments.

  6. In the “Compute and storage” tab, select the replication policy for your virtual machine. You can choose between continuous replication and replication frequency.

  7. Click on the “Create” button to create your Site Recovery deployment.

Step 3: Enable replication for your VM

With Site Recovery configured, we can now enable replication for our virtual machine.

  1. Open your Recovery Services vault and navigate to the “Protected items” tab.

  2. Click on the “+Replicate” button to enable replication for your virtual machine.

  3. In the “Source” tab, select your source and target environments.

  4. In the “Virtual machines” tab, select the virtual machine you want to replicate.

  5. In the “Replication settings” tab, select the replication frequency and retention period for your virtual machine.

  6. Click on the “OK” button to enable replication for your virtual machine.

Step 4: Test your recovery plan

With replication enabled, we can now test our recovery plan to ensure that our virtual machine can be recovered in the event of a disaster.

  1. Open your Recovery Services vault and navigate to the “Recovery plans” tab.

  2. Click on the “+Recovery Plan” button to create a new recovery plan.

  3. In the “Basics” tab, enter a unique name for your recovery plan and select your virtual machines.

  4. In the “Pre-failover” tab, configure the pre-failover steps, such as stopping any running processes or shutting down virtual machines.

  5. In the “Post-failover” tab, configure the post-failover steps, such as starting virtual machines or running scripts.

  6. Click on the “Create” button to create your recovery plan.

  7. Test your recovery plan by clicking on the “Test Failover” button. This will create a test environment in Azure and replicate your virtual machine to that environment.

  8. Once the test environment is ready, verify that you

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we walked you through the process of setting up a disaster recovery solution with Azure VM Backup. By creating a Recovery Services vault, configuring Site Recovery, enabling replication for your virtual machine, and testing your recovery plan, you can be confident that your IT infrastructure is protected against data loss or system downtime. Azure VM Backup is a reliable and cost-effective disaster recovery solution that can be set up in just a few steps.

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