Cloud Backup and disaster recovery

Discover how Azure Backup and Azure Site Recovery integrate to provide an end-to-end backup and disaster recovery solution.

VMware to Azure replication process

As with any other deployment, the most important part is planning and design. My suggestion is to first assess your DR requirements, and then head over to the ASR support matrix to check supported components and settings. ASR does have some limitations (e.g. maximum data disk size 4 TB, etc), and you’d be wise to check them before beginning.

One very important step when planning your replication and failover strategy is the network: how to connect to the Azure VMs after failover? Use different IP addresses or retain the same? Express route or VPN? Public facing VMs? DNS changes? All these questions need to be answered before you begin.

It’s also important to understand the VMware to Azure replication process and architecture.

The main ASR components are: Recovery Services Vault, Storage account and Network on Azure side and Configuration server on VMware side. Replicated data from on-premises VMs is stored in the storage account. Azure VMs are created with the replicated data only when you run a failover from on-premises to Azure. The Azure VMs connect to the Azure virtual network when they’re created. The configuration server coordinates communication between on-premises and Azure, and manages data replication.