With the release of v10 of Backup & Replication came significant enhancements to the Cloud Tier. As I wrote about here, we introduced Copy Policy, Immutability and Object Storage Import into v10. This added to the capabilities found in 9.5 Update 4 release. Last year, we released the first version of the On Demand Recovery with Cloud Tier to VMware Cloud on AWS using Update 4 technologies which gained a lot of traction among AWS and VMware customers looking to leverage VMC for disaster recovery.
With the enhancements in v10, the solution actually get better and is a lot more efficient at getting data up, and then recovering data into the SDDC.
Together with AWS and VMware, we looked at how Cloud Tier could be used as a way to allow on demand recovery into a cloud platform like VMware Cloud on AWS. By way of a quick overview, the solution shown below has an on-premises Veeam Backup & Replication server backing up to a Scale Out Backup Repository which has a Capacity Tier backed by an Object Storage repository in Amazon S3. Using the new Copy Policy in v10, restore points are immediately copied to the Capacity Tier. This provides a more consistent way of knowing that data will be shipped offsite compared to the Move Policy offload in Update 4 which required a couple of caveats in place before data was offloaded leaving the potential for gaps in backup points.
With a full immediate copy of what’s on-premises up in the Capacity Tier, if disaster happens, an SDDC is spun up, a Backup & Replication Server deployed and configured into that SDDC. From there, the new Object Storage Import features will use the same Object Storage Repository configured with the same credentials and connected to the Object Storage bucket. From there, instead of a potentially long resync of the metadata back to the local performance tier. (as described here) the points are visible in Backup & Replication rights away and are then able to be streamed direct form Object Storage for the recovery.
The diagram above has been published on the AWS Reference Architecture page, and while this post has been brief, there will be an update to the offical AWS Blog Post co-authored by myself Frank Fan from AWS around this solution. We will also look to automate the process as much as possible to make this a truely on demand solution that can be actioned with the click of a button. There are now even more tools like the Terraform VMware Cloud on AWS Provider which make the initial setup of the SDDC even easier.
The concept has been validated and the hope is people looking to leverage VMware Cloud on AWS as a target for disaster and recovery look to leverage Veeam and the Cloud Tier to make that happen. We have had a lot of interest in this solution as it offers a more affordable way to leverage VMC for Disaster Recovery.
References: AWS Reference Architecture
