Introduction

In today’s world, Disaster Recovery (DR) plans are a major concern for every organization because any unexpected event like natural disasters, cyber attacks, or hardware failures can affect the business continuity heavily. Therefore, it is necessary for organizations to have a fully functioning DR solution in place that can ensure minimal loss of data and quick restoration of services. Microsoft Azure offers a DR solution called Azure Site Recovery (ASR) that a company can utilize to protect their infrastructure and data from disasters by replicating it to the Azure cloud. This tutorial will help you understand ASR and its features and guide you through the process of setting up ASR for your environment.

What is Azure Site Recovery

Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a disaster recovery solution offered by Microsoft Azure that helps organizations protect their infrastructure and data from unexpected outages or disasters by replicating it to the Azure cloud. It provides the ability to orchestrate replication, failover, and recovery of virtual machines and physical servers. ASR can replicate to and from on-premises, Azure, and other service providers. It supports major enterprise workloads like Microsoft SQL Server, SharePoint, Exchange Server, and SAP.

Features of Azure Site Recovery

ASR provides several essential features to ensure your business operates as smoothly as possible during the event of a disaster:

Replication

ASR can replicate VMs and physical servers to Azure with continuous data protection, allowing online and offline replication based on the recovery point objective (RPO) you want to achieve.

Orchestration

ASR provides orchestration of failover and recovery operations, automating tasks and managing the entire DR process to minimize downtime and simplify management.

Site Recovery Monitoring and Reporting

ASR provides monitoring, alerting, and reports on the replication health, failover and failback operations, and RPO compliance.

Application-Consistent Replication

ASR provides application-specific awareness, leading to an application-consistent copy of the data replicated to Azure.

Requirements for Azure Site Recovery

Before setting up Azure Site Recovery, you must meet the following prerequisites:

An Azure subscription
A virtual network and a subnet in Azure to receive the failed-over virtual machines.
A backup server in Azure or a System Center Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) setup.
Access to on-premises virtual machines that require protection.
A Windows Server Active Directory environment to manage the on-premises servers
Access to the Internet for the on-premises environment.

Steps to Set up Azure Site Recovery

To set up Azure Site Recovery, follow these steps:

Step 1: Create a Recovery Services vault

A Recovery Services vault stores backup data and can be used to manage multiple types of backups. To create a Recovery Services vault:

Open the Azure portal and click on the Create a resource button.
In the search bar, type “Recovery Services vault” and select the corresponding search result.
Click on the Create button to start creating the Recovery Services vault.
Provide the name and region for the Recovery Services vault.
In the next step, create a new Resource Group or use an existing one.
Review and accept the terms and conditions and click on the Create button to create the Recovery Services vault.

Step 2: Set up replication

After the Recovery Services vault has been created, the next step is to set up replication of the on-premises VMs and physical servers to the Recovery Services vault.

Open the Recovery Services vault and select Site Recovery in the left menu.
Click on the +Replicate button.
In the Source settings, select “Between an on-premises VMware site and Azure.”
In the Target settings, select the subscription, Resource Group, and virtual network to receive the failed-over virtual machines.
Create or select a storage account to hold replicated data.
In the Replication settings page, select the relevant replication settings policies.
In the Replication policy settings page, select the RPO, recovery points retention, and the recovery point frequency.
In the Advanced settings section, you can provide custom replication settings.
Once the settings are configured, review and enable the replication policy.

Step 3: Install the Azure Site Recovery agent

The Azure Site Recovery agent must be installed on the physical and virtual servers that need to be protected. The agent can be downloaded from the Azure Site Recovery web portal by selecting the “Prepare infrastructure” option.

Click on “Prepare infrastructure” and select “Protection goal”.
Select the relevant source and destination configurations and proceed to “Prepare source”.
Install the Azure Site Recovery Provider, Configuration server, and Master Target servers based on your recovery plans.
Install the Azure Site Recovery Mobility Service on each virtual machine and physical server that needs protection.
Run the discovery and pairing process to register the server with the Recovery Services vault.

Step 4: Create a replication policy

A replication policy defines the replication frequency, RPO, and retention of recovery points. A replication policy is associated with a Recovery Services vault and can be used for multiple failover and recovery plans.

Open the Recovery Services vault and click on Site Recovery in the left menu.
Select “Settings” and click on the +Replication policy button.
Provide the name and description of the replication policy.
Select the replication frequency, RPO, and retention period for the policy.
Click on the OK button to create a replication policy.

Step 5: Create a recovery plan

A recovery plan defines the order and actions to be taken in case of a failover event. The recovery plan can be tested and executed in the Azure portal, PowerShell, or through APIs.

Open the Recovery Services vault and click on Site Recovery in the left menu.
Select the Recovery Plan under Settings and click on the +Recovery Plan button.
Name and describe the recovery plan.
Select preparedness status.
Click on the +Group button and select the machines to include in the recovery plan.
Select the failover direction, settings, readiness, and scripts.
Review and create the recovery plan.
Test and execute the recovery plan.

Step 6: Failover and recovery

Once the recovery plan has been tested and validated, it can be executed to failover and recover the servers and data to Azure.

Open the Recovery Services vault and click on Site Recovery in the left menu.
Select the Recovery Plan.
Click on the +New button to open the Failover wizard.
Select the source and target, and then click on OK.
Review settings, and then click on Finish.

Conclusion

Azure Site Recovery provides organizations a powerful Disaster Recovery tool that helps protect their infrastructure and data from unexpected events by replicating it to Azure. This tutorial demonstrated the basic steps to set up Azure Site Recovery, from creating a Recovery Services vault to implementing a recovery plan, and failover and recovery procedures. With the use of Azure Site Recovery, organizations can ensure business continuity and minimize disruptions during a disaster or outage giving peace of mind to businesses and their customers.