PPBS User Guide - Preparing your environment for successful PPBS Disaster Recovery

1. What is Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS)?

• PPBS introduces the AWS Disaster Recovery functionality to extend its converged cloud-based data protection solution for enterprise infrastructure.

• The Disaster Recovery functionality enables you to recover and spin up the already backed up VMware virtual machines in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud.

• In case of disaster, Disaster Recovery ensures business continuity without the need for additional dedicated on-premise software, storage or hardware, which in turn ensures a significant reduction in cost and improvement in agility.

2. What are the benefits of PPBS DR?

• Disaster Recovery provides a wide array of benefits to maintain business continuity during unplanned disasters that may disrupt the VMware environment.

• To ensure proper failover when disaster strikes your environment, Disaster Recovery provides an on-demand, cost-effective solution to eliminate the infrastructure burden, and significantly reduce the downtime.

3. How to purchase the DR License?

• PPBS Enterprise tier suite requires you to buy DR licenses (one license per virtual machine) to protect the VMware environment from disaster.

• However, with PPBS Elite tier license, you can configure as many as virtual machines for disaster recovery.

• For more detailed information, Disaster Recover Licensing

4. What are AWS component costs for cloud DR for VMware?

• PPBS Cloud DR for VMware incurs the following types of AWS costs:

  • Fixed Costs : Fixed costs are for the AWS resources deployed as part of CloudFormation Deployment.

  • Variable Costs : Variable costs are for the AWS resources created and used as a part of DR operations like Update DR Copy, DR Failover, and DR Failback.

5. What is the PPBS disaster recovery workflow?

• The following table lists the different stages of the disaster recovery process. Click on each stage to get more information.

  • Restore :

    • With Disaster Recovery, the PPBS AWS proxy:

      • Reads the virtual machine backup data from the PPBS Cloud

      • Replicates the virtual machine to a writable snapshot called a DR copy in your AWS account

  • Failover :

    • The PPBS AWS proxy replicates the entire virtual machine the first time it creates a DR copy.

    • Subsequently, it incrementally updates the DR copy based on the replication frequency specified in the DR plan.

    • This DR copy replaces the copy that is present in your AWS account. PPBS AWS proxy maintains only the latest DR copy of a virtual machine.

    • At the time of failover, the PPBS AWS proxy:

      • Converts the available DR copy to an EBS volume

      • Injects drivers into this EBS volume that is required to boot up the EC2 instance

      • Starts the EC2 instance, in turn spinning up to production in minutes

  • Failback :

    • You can failback the EC2 instances (failed over) and recover the virtual machine with a single click in your virtualization infrastructure in a few hours after it has been recovered to your AWS account during failover.

6. Which ports and communication protocols are used?

• The ports that PPBS uses for secure connection and communication are listed in this document .

7. What is PPBS AWS proxy?

• PPBS AWS proxy is an Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance that runs the Disaster Recovery service.

• It orchestrates copying data from the PPBS Cloud to your AWS account and creates a DR copy at a frequency specified in the DR plan.

• The PPBS AWS proxy runs in your AWS account.

• The PPBS AWS proxy is launched in the same AWS region where the virtual machine backups are located.

• The EC2 instances are started in the same region for disaster recovery.

• PPBS uses the AWS Cloud Formation template to deploy the PPBS AWS proxy.

📝 Note
​ PPBS recommends that you deploy at least two PPBS AWS proxies (also referred to as DR proxies) in separate availability zones for high availability. Each PPBS AWS proxy can run three DR restore jobs concurrently. This means that three virtual machines can be copied from the ANS cloud to the customer AWS account simultaneously. The PPBS AWS proxy deployment takes less than 10 minutes.

8. What are the prerequisites before deploying AWS proxy?

• The PPBS services should be available in the availability zone for the subnet that you intend to select during the PPBS AWS proxy deployment.

• Perform the task mentioned in the pre-check article to determine if the chosen subnet can be selected for the PPBS AWS proxy deployment or not.

9. How to I deploy AWS proxy?

• PPBS AWS proxy deployment comprises of the following steps: (See Deploy AWS proxy for detailed information)

  • Step 1: Select an AWS region on the Management Console

  • Step 2: Create a CloudFormation Stack on the AWS Management Console

  • Step 3: View deployed proxy

10. What is Disaster Recovery(DR) Plan?

• DR plan encompasses virtual machines configured for disaster recovery, the AWS account used for disaster recovery, the replication frequency, the network settings, instance-related failover settings, and the order in which you want to recover the instances.

• The steps involve in creating DR plan is as below. (See Create a DR plan for detailed information.)

  • Add DR plan details

  • Add virtual machines

  • Add failover settings

  • Define network mapping

11. What is DR Restore or DR Copy?

PPBS AWS proxy:

• Reads the virtual machine backup data from the PPBS Cloud

• Replicates the virtual machine to a writable snapshot called a DR copy in your AWS account

12. How to manage DR Restore or DR Copy?

• You can set replication frequency in DR Plan

  • You can select one of the following options from the drop-down list:

    • Immediately after backup: The DR copy update starts immediately after a successful backup of the virtual machine configured for disaster recovery

    • Daily: The DR copy update starts every day at the configured time.

    • Weekly: The DR copy updates every week at the configured time.

    • Start Time: The Start Time list appears only if you select the Daily or Weekly options from the Replication Frequency drop-down list. The time when you want the DR copy update to start. In the adjacent box, select the AM or PM option depending on when you want the DR copy to get updated.

• Manually update the DR Copy

  • Go to Management Console - select your organization - Disaster Recovery -Select the DR Plan - All Virtual Machines - Select checkbox beside the VM - Update DR Copy.

13. What is DR failover?

In an event of an actual disaster or for testing purposes, Disaster Recovery Failover feature aims to recover virtual machines in the AWS account based on the configuration and failover settings specified in the DR plan.

14. What are the types of DR Failover?

PPBS allows you to configure virtual machines for disaster recovery failover in the two modes, Production and Test.

• Production Failover

  • It is used to test that the virtual machines are recovered at the recovery site as expected. This operation creates virtual machines based on the preconfigured virtual machine failover settings specified in the DR plan.

  • It is used to recover protected virtual machines to AWS in the event of an actual disaster. Production Failover ensures that the virtual environment is failed over successfully with minimal downtime during the disaster.

• Test Failover

  • It is used to test that the virtual machines are recovered at the recovery site as expected. This operation creates virtual machines based on the preconfigured virtual machine failover settings specified in the DR plan.

15. What are the DR Failover pre-checks?

There are two types of DR Failover pre-checks

• Environment

  • Incorrect IP settings

  • Incorrect instance type

  • Issues with the subnet

  • Unavailability of the DR Copy

• Guest OS

  • When the VMs are being backed up, the Failover checks - Guest OS kick into action and provide the status; if the VMs have successfully cleared the checks and are DR ready or not.

  • With these checks in place, you can prepare a robust DR strategy and avoid any failures during failover.

  • It further helps avoid sending requests to the cloud that are bound to fail and help reduce failed requests to the cloud, and your cloud spending too!

16. How to manage DR Failover?

The detailed step-by-step instructions for DR Failover setup can be found here.

17. What is disaster recovery failback?

• When you trigger failback, the backup proxy creates a target virtual machine in the virtualization infrastructure.

• The virtual machine then connects to the failed over EC2 instance and the data is copied to the virtual machine.

• PPBS then boots up the virtual machine and launches the target instance.

• You must configure the virtual machine with the previous backup policy to resume the operations.

• See About disaster recovery failback for VMware machines for detailed information.

18. What are the DR Failback pre-checks?

There are two types of DR Failback pre-checks

• Environment

• Guest OS

19. How to manage DR Failback?

The detailed step-by-step instructions for DR Failback can be found here.

20. What are the most commonly encountered issues with file servers?

• Lists of the scenarios that you might encounter while executing Disaster Recovery (Troubleshoot common disaster recovery scenarios)

• Lists of Disaster Recovery FAQs

21. What are the best practices for disaster recovery?

To learn more about the best practices that must be followed when implementing Disaster Recovery, Best Practices for Disaster Recovery as a Service