Azure Site Recovery

In this article, we’ll learn about Azure Site Recovery and learn to setup the replication of an Azure Virtual Machine in another region. We’ll learn about Backup Service and Site Recovery Service which are part of Azure Site Recovery. We then proceed to dive into the process to setup the Site Recovery Service using the Disaster Recovery in order to setup VMs to secondary location to failover in case of any outages. We’ll also learn about Recovery Vault for Azure Backup and go through a step-by-step process to setup the Recovery Vault for Azure Backup.

Azure Site Recovery

Azure Site Recovery focuses on keeping business live and running to save from any kind of causes to disrupt service with the built-in disaster recovery service. As we have discussed in our previous article on Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery, it is crucial that organizations set up the necessary business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategies so that data is safe, workloads and apps function online even during planned as well as unexpected outages. The Azure Site Recovery supports the Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery strategy in the following ways.

Backup Service

The Azure Backup service makes it easier to recover data by keeping it safe.

Site Recovery Service

The Site Recovery Service provided by Azure makes sure of business continuity by enabling the capability to run the services of workloads along with any business apps during the outages. The workloads running on any Virtual Machine (VMs) or physical machine are replicated to a secondary location from the primary location. During the outages in the primary site, the failover proceeds to function from a secondary location thus ensuring any apps access and functioning isn’t disrupted. Once the primary site is well functioning, we can fail back to it again.

Let us learn how we can setup a replica of the Virtual Machine in Azure to a secondary location thus ensuring the workloads aren’t affected.

Setting up Disaster Recovery for Azure Virtual Machine to Secondary Azure Region

Step 1

First of all, let us initialize a Virtual Machine. For this, visit the Azure Portal homepage.

Step 2

Search for Virtual Machine. In the Virtual Machine Page, Click on Create.

Step 3

Choose the type of VM you want to setup and thus accordingly fill in the details.

Setup the Username and Password for the Administrator Account. Remember this, as these details are critical for use and access further down the line.

Once all details are filled properly, Click on Review + Create.

Step 4

Azure will now Validate your details and requirements. Once Validation is Passed, you can click on Create.

Step 5

The Deployment will now proceed and you’ll be updated with Notifications.

Step 6

Once the Deployment is Complete, you can access the Virtual Machine by Clicking on Go to Resource.

Step 7

You can see the details of the Virtual Machine we’ve setup. Now, to work on Site Recovery, we select the Disaster Recovery on the left side under the Operations bar.

Step 8

We’ll now be provided with different options for Target Region. This is where the new secondary location will be setup for Site Recovery in case of any failovers.

Once, chosen Click on Review + Start Replication.

Step 9

Azure will now check and finally allow to Create the Replication. Click on Start Replication to initiate the process.

This will now replicate all the workloads of the Azure Virtual Machine we chose to another secondary location which will then be used in case of any outages to failover to and function our applications seamlessly preventing us, our data and services from any disasters that may be planned or unplanned.

Recovery Vaults

Recovery Vaults can be understood as the storage entity in Azure that holds the data. This service helps hold the backup data for different Azure Services from Azure SQL Databases to IaaS VMs. Basically, it functions as the service to support the Azure Backup.

Let us learn to setup the Recovery Vault in Azure.

Step 1

On the Azure Portal Search Bar, Search for Recovery Services Vaults.

Step 2

Select the Recovery Servies Vaults and Under in Choose the Create tab or Click on Create Recovery Services Vault.

Step 3

Fill in the Details for the Vault Name and Region. Remember, this Region should be different from our Recovery Region. Here, we’ve chosen West US different from East US for our secondary location.

Step 4

Click on Review + Create.

Once the Confirmation is provided, we can now Create the Vault. Click on Create to initiate the process.

Conclusion

Thus, in this article, we learned about Azure Site Recovery, Backup Service, and Site Recovery Service. We then proceeded to dive into the process to setup the Site Recovery Service using the Disaster Recovery to setup VMs to a secondary location to failover in case of any outages. Similarly, we also went through a step-by-step process to setup the Recovery Vault for Azure Backup.