Veeam Replication to DR site – Part 3: Replication

Previously in Part 1 and Part 2  I went over the design and Veeam configuration respectively. In this final part I will run through the set up of the replication job.

 

Replication Job Set Up

 

1. Within the Veeam console click ‘Home’ and then select Replication Job

New-replication

 

2. Give the job a suitable name

New-replication-wizard-1

 

3. The next screen allows you to add the appropriate VMs , click Add

New-replication-wizard-2

 

4. Browse to the VM(s) to be replicated in the Add Objects browser and then click Add

New-replication-wizard-3

 

5. Click Next

New-replication-wizard-4

 

6. Now select your destination Host or cluster by clicking Choose

 

New-replication-wizard-5

 

7. Select the appropriate Host

New-replication-wizard-6

8. If required select destination Resource pool, VM folder and Datastore

New-replication-wizard-7

9.  The next setting is where you would specify your source and target proxies. Click on Choose for the source proxy

New-replication-wizard-8

 

10. Select the option Use the backup proxy servers specified below and then tick the box associated with your Source proxy (PRD-PROXY), then click ok

New-replication-wizard-9

 

11. Do the same selection for the Target proxy (DR-PROXY)

New-replication-wizard-10

12.  If the target host/proxy are located off site, then you will want to optimise the data transferred via WAN. To do so, select Advanced on the job setting screen.

New-replication-wizard-11

 

13. From the drop down menu Storage optimizations, Optimize for: select WAN target.

New-replication-wizard-12

 

14. on the Guest Processing screen you can enable application aware processing or indexing the guest file system. This was not a requirement for this set up , so click Next

New-replication-wizard-13

 

15. Next you can define a Schedule , as this was my test 1st set up, no schedule was specified. Click Create.

New-replication-wizard-14

 

16. Verify the details contained within the Summary screen and click Finish

New-replication-wizard-15

 

 

The next step was to perform a test run of the replication.

Issues

On my 1st run I encountered the following error :-

Replication-error1

 

This turned out to be an problem with the 2 proxies being unable to resolve each others name. Entries in each proxy’s local hosts file resolved this.

On the next run I encountered this error :-

Replication-error2

 

The cause of this error was down to the target host not having the same port group/network configuration as the source.

Luckily the replication job set up can take care of this and allow for network remapping. A quick edit of the job and defining source/target networks was required.

1. Edit the replication job and ensure  Seperate virtual networks is ticked.

Replication-error2-fix1

 

2. On the Virtual Machines screen click Next

Replication-error2-fix2

 

3. On the Destination  screen click Next

Replication-error2-fix3

 

4. On the Network screen click Add

Replication-error2-fix4

5. Browse to select the Source network and the Target network, and then click Ok

Replication-error2-fix5 Replication-error2-fix6

 

6. Click Finish to submit the amended job.

 

This time the replication test was able to run and complete successfully.

Replication-job1

Add-proxy8

 

 

Conclusion

The replication set up is straight forward process, as long you have both your networking and your DNS in order. Following the best practises set out by Veeam in their deployment and configuration guide is a must, doing so will mean you wont go far wrong.

 

The next steps to be taken will be investigation ways to re-ip the Linux VMs on the target host, as Veeam doesn’t provide this capability for Linux VMs at this moment in time.