Lab: Implementing Azure-based recovery services

Scenario

To address concerns regarding the outdated operational model, the limited use of automation, and reliance on tape backups for restores and disaster recovery, you decide to use Microsoft Azure-based recovery services. As the first step, you’ll implement Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup.

Note: An interactive lab simulation is available that allows you to click through this lab at your own pace. You may find slight differences between the interactive simulation and the hosted lab, but the core concepts and ideas being demonstrated are the same.

Objectives

After completing this lab, you’ll be able to:

  • Create and configure an Azure Site Recovery vault.
  • Implement Hyper-V VM protection by using Azure Site Recovery vault.
  • Implement Azure Backup.
  • Deprovision the Azure lab environment.

Estimated time: 60 minutes

Lab setup

Virtual machines: AZ-801T00A-SEA-DC1, AZ-801T00A-SEA-SVR1, and AZ-801T00A-SEA-SVR2 must be running. Other VMs can be running, but they aren’t required for this lab.

Note: AZ-801T00A-SEA-DC1, AZ-801T00A-SEA-SVR1, and AZ-801T00A-SEA-SVR2 virtual machines are hosting the installation of SEA-DC1, SEA-SVR1, and SEA-SVR2

  1. Select SEA-SVR2.

  2. Sign in using the following credentials:

    • Username: Administrator
    • Password: Pa55w.rd
    • Domain: CONTOSO

For this lab, you’ll use the available VM environment and an Azure subscription. Before you begin the lab, ensure that you have an Azure subscription and a user account with the Owner or Contributor role in that subscription.

Exercise 1: Creating and configuring an Azure Site Recovery vault

Scenario

To implement Azure Site Recovery for VM running in an Azure VM, with Azure as the disaster recovery site, you have to first create and configure an Azure Site Recovery vault.

The main tasks for this exercise are as follows:

  1. Create an Azure Site Recovery vault.
  2. Configure the Azure Site Recovery vault.

Task 1: Create an Azure Site Recovery vault

  1. On SEA-SVR2, start Microsoft Edge, go to the Azure portal at https://portal.azure.com/, and sign in by using the credentials of a user account with the Owner role in the subscription you’ll be using in this lab.

  2. In the Azure portal, create a Recovery Services vault with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Setting Value
    Subscription the name of the Azure subscription you will be using in this lab
    Resource group the name of a new resource group AZ801-L0501-RG
    Vault name az801l05a-rsvault
    Location the name of an Azure region where you can create an Azure Recovery Services vault and is close to the location of the lab environment

    Note: Wait until the Recovery Services vault is provisioned. This should take about 2 minutes.

    Note: By default, the Storage Replication type of the vault is set to Geo-redundant (GRS) and Soft Delete is enabled. You will change these settings in the lab to simplify deprovisioning, but you should ensure they are enabled in your production environments.

Task 2: Configure the Azure Site Recovery vault

  1. On SEA-SVR2, in the Microsoft Edge window displaying the Azure portal, browse to the newly created Azure Recovery Services vault.

  2. In the Azure portal, set the vault’s Storage replication type to Locally-redundant.

    Note: Storage replication type cannot be changed after you implement protection.

  3. In the Azure portal, disable the vault’s Soft Delete and Security Features settings.

Exercise 2: Implementing Hyper-V VM protection by using Azure Site Recovery vault

Scenario

With a test Hyper-V VM and a Recovery Services vault created, you can now proceed to implement Hyper-V VM protection by using Azure Site Recovery. You will perform a test failover and review the settings of the planned and unplanned failover.

The main tasks for this exercise are as follows:

  1. Implement an Azure recovery site.
  2. Prepare protection of a Hyper-V virtual machine.
  3. Enable replication of a Hyper-V virtual machine.
  4. Review Azure VM replication settings.
  5. Perform a failover of the Hyper-V virtual machine.

Task 1: Implement an Azure recovery site

  1. On SEA-SVR2, in the Azure portal, create a virtual network with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Setting Value
    Subscription the name of the Azure subscription you are using in this lab
    Resource group the name of a new resource group AZ801-L0502-RG
    Name az801l05-dr-vnet
    Region the name of the Azure region into which you deployed the Recovery Services vault earlier in this lab

  2. Within the new virtual network, create a subnet with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Setting Value
    Subnet name subnet0
    Subnet address range 10.5.0.0/24

  3. On SEA-SVR2, in the Azure portal, create another virtual network with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Setting Value
    Subscription the name of the Azure subscription you are using in this lab
    Resource group AZ801-L0502-RG
    Name az801l05-test-vnet
    Region the name of the Azure region into which you deployed the Recovery Services vault earlier in this lab

    Note: Ignore the warning regarding the overlapping IP address space. This is intentional, so the IP address space of the test environment matches the IP address space of the disaster recovery environment.

  4. Within the new virtual network, create a subnet with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Setting Value
    Subnet name subnet0
    Subnet address range 10.5.0.0/24

  5. On SEA-SVR2, in the Azure portal, create a storage account with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Setting Value
    Subscription the name of the Azure subscription you are using in this lab
    Resource group AZ801-L0502-RG
    Storage account name any globally unique name between 3 and 24 in length consisting of letters and digits, starting with a letter
    Region the name of the Azure region into which you deployed the Recovery Services vault earlier in this lab
    Performance Standard
    Redundancy Locally redundant storage (LRS)
    Enable soft delete for blobs disabled
    Enable soft delete for containers disabled

    Note: The soft delete functionality for blobs and containers must be disabled when using the storage account for Azure Site Recovery.

Task 2: Prepare protection of a Hyper-V virtual machine

  1. On SEA-SVR2, in the Azure portal, browse to the az801l05a-rsvault Recovery Services vault blade.
  2. On the az801l05a-rsvault blade, on the vertical menu, start the configuration of Site Recovery.

  3. On the az801l05a-rsvault | Site Recovery blade, in the Hyper-V machines to Azure section, select 1. Prepare infrastructure and specify the following settings:

    Setting Value
    Deployment planning completed? Yes, I have done it
    Are you Using System Center VMM to manage Hyper-V hosts No
    Source setting: Hyper-V Site az801l05-site
  4. On the Source settings tab of the Prepare infrastructure blade, select the Add Hyper-V server link.
  5. On the Add Server blade, select the Download link in step 3 of the procedure for adding on-premises Hyper-V hosts in order to download the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Provider.
  6. Install AzureSiteRecoveryProvider.exe with the Microsoft Update option disabled.
  7. From the Azure portal, download the vault registration key into the Downloads folder.
  8. Complete the Provider installation wizard and start the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Registration Wizard.
  9. When prompted, in the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Registration Wizard, provide the location of the vault credentials file.
  10. Complete the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Registration Wizard with the default settings.
  11. Refresh the browser page displaying the Azure portal and repeat the initial steps of the 1. Prepare infrastructure procedure.
  12. After you reach the Source settings tab of the Prepare infrastructure blade, verify that the Hyper-V site and Hyper-V servers settings are set correct and continue to the next step.
  13. On the Target settings tab of the Prepare infrastructure blade, accept the default settings.

  14. On the Replication policy tab of the Prepare infrastructure blade, create a new policy with the following settings and associate it with the Hyper-V site:

    Setting Value
    Name az801l05-replication-policy
    Copy frequency 30 seconds
  15. Complete the Prepare infrastructure procedure and wait until the association process completes.

Task 3: Enable replication of a Hyper-V virtual machine

  1. On SEA-SVR2, in the Azure portal, on the az801l05a-rsvault | Site Recovery blade, in the Hyper-V machines to Azure section, select 2. Enable replication.
  2. On the Source environment tab of the Enable replication blade, in the Source location drop-down list, select az801l05-site.

  3. On the Target environment tab of the Enable replication blade, specify the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Setting Value
    Subscription the name of the Azure subscription you are using in this lab
    Post-failover resource group AZ801-L0502-RG
    Post-failover deployment model Resource Manager
    Storage account the name of the storage account you created in the first task of this exercise
    Azure network Configure now for selected machines
    Virtual network az801l05-dr-vnet
    Subnet subnet0 (10.5.0.0/24)
  4. On the Virtual machine selection tab of the Enable replication blade, select the SEA-CORE1 entry.
  5. On the Replication settings tab of the Enable replication blade, set the Defaults and OS type to Windows.
  6. Complete the Enable replication procedure with the default settings.

Task 4: Review Azure VM replication settings

  1. In the Azure portal, back on the az801l05a-rsvault | Site Recovery blade, browse to the az801l05a-rsvault | Replicated items blade.

  2. On the az801l05a-rsvault | Replicated items blade, ensure that there is an entry representing the SEA-CORE1 virtual machine and verify that its Replication Health is listed as Healthy and that its Status is listed as either Enabling protection or displaying a current percentage of synchronization progress.

    Note You might need to wait a few minutes until the SEA-CORE1 entry appears on the az801l05a-rsvault | Replicated items blade.

  3. From the az801l05a-rsvault | Replicated items blade, browse to the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade.

  4. On the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade, review the Health and status, Failover readiness, Latest recovery points, and Infrastructure view sections. Note the Planned Failover, Failover and Test Failover toolbar icons.

    Note: Wait until the status changes to Protected. The time required for this to take place depends on the available bandwidth of the connection between the lab environment and the Azure region hosting the Recovery Services vault. You will need to refresh the browser page for the status to be updated.

  5. On the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade, select Latest recovery points and review Latest crash-consistent and Latest app-consistent recovery points.

Task 5: Perform a failover of the Hyper-V virtual machine

  1. On SEA-SVR2, in the browser window displaying the Azure portal, on the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade go to the Compute and Network setting and review the virtual machine size. Validate that the size is set to A1_v2, if not edit the size to be A1_v2.

  2. Go back to the overview and initiate Test failover with the following settings (leave others with their default values) and select OK:

    Setting Value
    Choose a recovery point the default option
    Azure virtual network az801l05-test-vnet

  3. In the Azure portal, browse back to the az801l05a-rsvault blade, and from there, browse to the listing of Site Recovery jobs. Wait until the status of the Test failover job is listed as Successful.

    Note: The time required for the test failover to complete depends on the available bandwidth of the connection between the lab environment and the Azure region hosting the Recovery Services vault. You will need to refresh the browser page for the status to be updated.

    Note: While waiting for the test failover to complete, proceed to Exercise 3 and, after you finish it, step through the remaining portion of this exercise.

  4. In the Azure portal, browse to the Virtual machines blade and note the entry representing the newly provisioned virtual machine.

    Note: Initially, the virtual machine will have the name consisting of the asr- prefix and randomly generated suffix, but will be renamed eventually to SEA-CORE1-test.

  5. In the Azure portal, browse back to the SEA-CORE1 replicated item blade and initiate Cleanup test failover.
  6. After the test failover cleanup job completes, refresh the browser page displaying the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade and note that you have the option to perform planned or unplanned failover.
  7. From the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade, browse to the Planned failover blade.
  8. On the Planned failover blade, note that the failover direction settings are already set and not modifiable.
  9. Close the Planned failover blade without initiating a failover.
  10. From the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade, browse to the Failover blade.
  11. On the Failover blade, note that you have the option to choose a recovery point.
  12. Close the Failover blade without initiating a failover.

Exercise 3: Implementing Azure Backup

Scenario

While waiting for the replication of the nested VM to complete, implement Azure Backup of the second Azure VM by using an Azure VM agent and Azure VM-level backup of the third Azure VM.

The main tasks for this exercise are as follows:

  1. Set up the Azure Recovery Services agent.
  2. Schedule Azure Backup.
  3. Perform an on-demand backup.
  4. Perform file recovery by using Azure Recovery Services agent.

Task 1: Set up the Azure Recovery Services agent

Note: In general, the same vault can be used to implement Azure Site Recovery and Azure Backup functionality. When choosing the Azure region to host the vault for the purpose of disaster recovery and backup, you should take into account recovery objectives, including the range of impact of a regional disaster as well as network latency considerations. In this lab, you will use the same vault for site recovery and backup to minimize the number of duplicate steps.

Note: To implement Azure Backup, you will be installing the Azure Recovery Services agent on SEA-SVR2, which already serves as the Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Provider. To eliminate dependency issues, you will start by uninstalling the existing installation of Azure Recovery Services agent.

  1. On SEA-SVR2, use the Settings app to uninstall Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent.

    Note: If you are getting an error message that says the installation has failed, then restart the VM and try again.

  2. On SEA-SVR2, in the Microsoft Edge window displaying the Azure portal, on the az801l05a-rsvault Recovery Services vault blade, initiate Backup configuration with the following settings:

    Settings Value
    Where is your workload running? On-premises
    What do you want to back up? Files and folders
  3. From the az801l05a-rsvault |Backup blade, initiate the Prepare infrastructure procedure.
  4. From the Prepare infrastructure blade, download Azure Recovery Services Agent to SEA-SVR2, start the Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent Setup Wizard, disable the Microsoft Updates option, and complete the installation with the default settings.
  5. After the installation completes, start the Register Server Wizard.
  6. Switch to the Microsoft Edge window displaying the Azure portal, and from the Prepare infrastructure blade, download the vault credentials file to the local Downloads folder.
  7. Switch back to the Register Server Wizard window, and when prompted to provide Vault Credentials, point to the newly downloaded file.
  8. On the Encryption Setting page of the Register Server Wizard, generate passphrase and store it in the local Documents folder.

  9. Review the Microsoft Azure Backup warning and proceed to complete the registration. This will automatically open the Microsoft Azure Backup console.

    Note In a production environment, you should store the passphrase file in a secure location other than the server being backed up.

Task 2: Schedule Azure Backup

  1. On SEA-SVR2, in the Microsoft Azure Backup console, schedule backup with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Settings Value
    Items to back up C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
    Backup Schedule Daily at 4:30 AM
    Retention Policy default
    Initial Backup type default

Task 3: Perform an on-demand backup

Note The option to run backup on demand becomes available after you create a scheduled backup.

  1. In the Microsoft Azure Backup console, initiate an on-demand backup with the default settings.
  2. Switch to the Microsoft Edge window displaying the Azure portal, browse back to the az801l05a-rsvault Recovery Services vault blade and display Backup items.
  3. From the az801l05a-rsvault | Backup items blade, browse to the Backup Items (Azure Backup Agent) blade and verify that there is an entry referencing drive C of sea-svr2.contoso.com.

Task 4: Perform file recovery by using Azure Recovery Services agent

  1. On SEA-SVR2, open File Explorer, browse to the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\ folder and delete the hosts file.

  2. Switch to the Microsoft Azure Backup window and start Recover Data Wizard with the following settings (leave others with their default values):

    Settings Value
    Restore target This server (sea-svr2.contoso.com)
    Restore items Individual files and folders
    Select the volume C:\

    Note Wait for the mount operation to complete. This might take about 2 minutes.

  3. On the Browse And Recover Files page, note the drive letter of the recovery volume, select Browse, and review the tip regarding the use of Robocopy.
  4. On SEA-SVR2, start Command Prompt.

  5. From the Administrator: Command Prompt window, run the following to copy and restore the hosts file to the original location (replace <recovery_volume> with the drive letter of the recovery volume you identified earlier):

    robocopy <recovery_volume>:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc hosts /r:1 /w:1

  6. From the Administrator: Command Prompt window, run the following to verify that the file has been restored:

    dir C:\Windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts
  7. Switch back to the Recover Data Wizard and unmount the mounted backup file.

Exercise 4: Deprovisioning the Azure lab environment

Scenario

To minimize Azure-related charges, you want to deprovision the Azure resources provisioned throughout this lab.

The main tasks for this exercise are as follows:

  1. Remove the protected items.
  2. Delete the lab resource groups.

Task 1: Remove the protected items

  1. On SEA-SVR2, switch to the Microsoft Edge window displaying the Backup Items (Azure Backup Agent) blade of the Azure portal and select the entry referencing drive C of sea-svr2.contoso.com.
  2. On the C:\ on sea-svr2.contoso.com blade, browse to the sea-svr2.contoso.com blade.

  3. From the sea-svr2.contoso.com blade, specify the following information and delete the backup:

    Settings Value
    Type the server name sea-svr2.contoso.com
    Reason Decommissioned
    Comments Decommissioned
  4. On SEA-SVR2, in the Microsoft Edge displaying the Azure portal, browse to the **az801l05a-rsvault Replicated items** blade, and select the SEA-CORE1 entry.
  5. From the SEA-CORE1 replicated items blade, disable replication and remove replicated items without providing feedback.

Task 2: Delete the lab resource groups

  1. On SEA-SVR2, in the Microsoft Edge window displaying the Azure portal, open a PowerShell session in the Azure Cloud Shell pane.

    Note If this is the first time you’re starting Cloud Shell and you’re presented with the You have no storage mounted message, select the subscription you are using in this lab, and then select Create storage.

  2. From the Cloud Shell pane, run the following command to list all resource groups you created in this lab:

    Get-AzResourceGroup -Name 'AZ801-L070*'

    Note: Verify that the output contains only the resource groups you created in this lab. These groups will be deleted in this task.

  3. From the Cloud Shell pane, run the following command to delete all resource groups created in this lab:

    Get-AzResourceGroup -Name 'AZ801-L050*' | Remove-AzResourceGroup -Force -AsJob

    Note The command executes asynchronously (as determined by the -AsJob parameter). So, while you will be able to immediately run another PowerShell command within the same PowerShell session, it will take a few minutes before the resource groups are actually removed.