plan Archivi — Gabriele Pelizzari

1 Aprile 202112 Gennaio 2023

VDrO v.4 – Create a DR plan

C. Create an Orchestration Plan

The DR plan is a sum of more Orchestration plans. This article is going to explain how to create them.

Just a small and important note before continuing: it’s mandatory to have already completed the steps described in the last article.

Let’s start!

From the main menu of the VAO server select the Manage button.

Now click on New as shown in picture 1.

Picture 1

The easy wizard is going to ask to choose a scope.

In our example, we use Linux-CDP as shown in picture 2.

Picture 2

Now fill up the plan info with the Plan Name, the description, the contact name of the plan (picture 3),

Picture 3

Select the type of Plans. In this article choose the CDP replica (picture 4)

Picture 4

In the next step please check if the correct “VM Group” appears.
If it doesn’t, it’s necessary to go back to the setup phase (please read the previous article) and fix the issue.

In our example, it appears correctly (Ubuntu-CDP) as shown in the next two pictures (5 and 6).

Picture 5

Picture 6

The next step shows the VM Recovery options (picture 7).

It gives the operator control of the plan. For example, stopping the plan if something goes wrong.

Picture 7

In “New VM Template” menu the VAO user can add additional steps to the orchestration process; for example, starting the CDP replica job first and shut down the source VM after (Picture 8)

Picture 8

Tips I: I created a customized script to change the IP Address of the VM.

Tips II: it’s possible to set up the access credential directly from this page by clicking the button on the bottom of the page. It is available for Windows VM only.

The next step defines the RTO & RPO.

The most important thing to remember here is that the RPO has to be equal or major than the RPO set in the CDP replica job (picture 9).

Picture 9

The last steps define when the plan report shall be automatically generated (picture 10) and if the readiness check has to run at the end of every single wizard (recommended option) (picture 11).

Picture 10

Picture 11

The result is shown in picture 12

Picture 12

The next article is going to be a video to see VDrO in action.

Take care and see you soon

29 Marzo 202116 Maggio 2021

VDrO v.4 – Setup a Plan from CDP Replica

In this article, I’m going to show you how to set up an orchestration plan using as a source a CDP replica Job.

This article will not cover how to create and run a CDP replica job from VBR console. If you need a guide please refer to the official guide.

There are four main parts:

Create a Business Category
Setup the Environment
Create an Orchestration Plan
Launch the Orchestration Plan

The first and the second topics will be described in this article. The third and the fourth ones in the next articles.

A. To create a business category for CDP replica, just open the Veeam ONE interface from the VAO server (picture 1).

In this example, the business category is called Ubuntu-CDP , the resource group is called CDP-Linux (Picture 2).

Picture 1

Picture 2

B. After opening the VAO web interface it’s necessary to follow the next four steps.

1. Add a Role and Scope (picture 3).

In my example, the scope is named Linux-CDP.

The plan Author/Operator is VBR.

Picture 3

2. Add or modify the Recovery Location (picture 4).

In my example, the recovery location is Verderio and has the Cluster-Verderio as Compute resource (Picture 5).

Pictures 6 and 7 show how to remap the Networking and how to set up the changing IP address rules.

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6

Picture 7

Note1: The Re-IP feature is available just for Windows VMs (please have a look at the official documentation to get all detail (user guide). For Linux VMs it’s necessary creating a custom script.

3. Reporting

Pictures 8, 9, and 10 show how to assign the Linux-CDP scope to your custom reports.

Picture 8

Picture 9

Picture 10

4. Assign the plan Components

Picture 11

Picture 12 shows how to add the VM group called Ubuntu-CDP to the scope Linux-CDP.

Picture 12

Picture 13 shows how to add a recovery location, i.e. Verderio.

Picture 13

Picture 14 shows how to add the plan steps to the orchestration plan (In my example I included all the plan steps).

Picture 14

The next article shows how to create an Orchestration Plan and run it.

Suggestion: If you can’t wait and want to do it immediately, just read the previous articles 🙂

See you soon and take care.

23 Agosto 202020 Dicembre 2021

VDrO – Netapp Integration

The fifth article will show how to use VDrO to automatize the Disaster Recovery using the Netapp snap-mirror technology as an engine.

Netapp – SnapMirror

The article (quite long) is composed of 6 parts:

Setting up Netapp Snap-mirror Protection
Setting up the Recovery Location
Setting up the Scope
Creation of Orchestration Plan
Starting the Plan
Checking the Orchestration Plan status

1 Setting up Netapp Snap-mirror Protection

In my personal lab, I added two NetApp simulators 9.6 setted-up in peer relationships.

Pictures 1 to 5, show how I set-up a protection rule for a single Volume (named Vol_iScsi_N01)

Picture 1

Picture 2

Picture 3

Picture 4

Picture 5

Picture 6 shows the VMware console view of DR site; the replicated volume is presented as read-only volume.

Picture 6

Tips: My personal suggestion is asking your storage expert the right procedure to set-up a snap-mirror relation between two Netapp storages.

2. Setting up the Recovery Location

The recovery location wizard is shown in pictures 7, 8 and 9.

Picture 7

Picture 8

Picture 9

3. Setting up the Scope

The Scope wizard is shown in picture 10.

Picture 10

4. Creation of Orchestration Plan

Let’s go back to the main steps.

The wizard drives the users to select the right voices as shown in pictures 11, 12, 13 and 14.

Picture 11

Picture 12

Picture 13

Picture 14

The test scenarios are available in this configuration too

The Readiness Test is a low-impact and fast method one to confirm that configuration of an orchestration plan matches the DR environment.

The Data-lab test verifies the DR plan starting VM in a separate network.

As shown in pictures 15,16,17 and 18. the steps are:

– Assigning Datalab to VM Group (it is available from the admin menu)

– Setting up the Lab Group

Picture 15

Tips: for testing the Netapp integration select the option Restore.

It means the Replica option is just available for VBR Replica jobs.

Picture 16

Picture 17

Picture 18

5. Starting the Plan

Next pictures show how to run the just created Orchestration plan.

Picture 19

Picture 20

Picture 21

Picture 22 shows the restore points available.

Tips: the shown Restore points are the replicated snapshot (created by snap-mirror).

Picture 22

Picture 23 shows my favorite option available on VDrO in the Storage replica scenario.

Let’s imagine you run the orchestration plan.
While failover is running, the primary site is back normal operativity.

Your IT manager asks to revert the failover. Is it possible? Well, it can be. If you selected “reprotect storage volumes after failover” during the steps you can easily do it!

Picture 23