How to Set up Azure Site Recovery?

It is critical to configure ASR because it helps to maintain business continuity when failures occur unexpectedly. This guide aims to provide information on how to set up ASR for Azure virtual machines (VMs), Prerequisites to enable replication, aspects of recovery plans, and recovery workflow, among others.

Prerequisites

Before setting up Azure Site Recovery, ensure you have the following:

1. Azure Subscription: You require an Azure active subscription. You may sign up for a free account there if you do not have one. We obtain this result since

2. Permissions: Your Azure account should be permitted to create an Azure Recovery Services vault and manage Virtual Machines in the target geo-location. The required roles include:

a. Site Recovery Contributor: To manage Site Recovery operations.

b. Virtual Machine Contributor: To create VMs in the target region.

c. Authorizations to write data to an Azure storage account and create disks that Azure manages.

3. Azure VMs: You should have one or more Azure VMs you wish to copy/mirror. Ensure that they fulfill the computing, storage, and networking demands.

4. Supported Regions: Check that the target region supports ASR.

5. Networking and Storage: You require an Azure virtual network as well as a storage account in the target geo for the VMs in question to be replicated.

Step-by-Step Setup

1. Create a Recovery Services Vault

The Recovery Services vault is a storage entity in Azure that holds the backup data for your VMs.

- Sign in to the Azure portal.

- In the Marketplace, search for Backup and Site Recovery.

- Click on Create Recovery Services vault.

- Fill in the required fields:

- Subscription: Choose the appropriate subscription.

- Resource Group: At the beginning of the session, establish a new resource group or select one of the existing ones.

- Vault Name: Give a different name for the vault.

- Region: Choose the location of Azure geography where the vault will be created.

- Click Review + Create and then Create.

2. Enable Replication for Azure VMs

Subsequently, replication for the given Azure VMs may be enabled for the Recovery Services vault.

- Go to the Recovery Services vault that you set up.

- Under Getting Started, select Site Recovery.

- Click on Prepare Infrastructure and select Azure to Azure.

- In the Source settings, choose the source region where your VMs are located.

- In the Target settings, select the target region for replication.

- Configure the replication policy:

- You can use the default policy or create a new one to define recovery point retention and application-consistent snapshot frequency.

- Select the VMs you want to replicate and click Enable Replication.

3. Configure Replication Settings

During the replication setup, you will need to configure additional settings:

- Replication Policy: Define how often recovery points are taken and how long they are retained.

- Extension Settings: Ensure the Site Recovery Mobility service extension is installed on the VMs. This service facilitates the replication process.

4. Monitor Replication Status

After enabling replication, monitor the status of your replicated VMs:

- In the Recovery Services vault, navigate to Replicated items.

- Here, you can check the health and replication status of your VMs. Ensure that all selected VMs show a healthy status.

5. Create and Customize Recovery Plans

Having a plan is very useful in organizing the failure process in a disaster.

- On the Recovery Services vault, choose Recovery Plans and tap the (+) button to create a new recovery plan.

- Enter the name of the recovery plan with the source and target regions to be selected.

- Add the VMs you want to include in the recovery plan.

- You can customize the plan by adding scripts or manual actions to be executed during failover.

6. Testing the Setup

Disaster recovery setup should be tested to confirm that the performance of the organization’s system is well-checked.

- Go to the Recovery Services vault and choose the recovery plan that you created before.

- Click on Test Failover to simulate a failover scenario without impacting your production environment.

- Monitor the test failover process to ensure the VMs can be successfully brought up in the target region.

7. Perform a Failover

In a disaster, you can initiate a failover to switch operations to the target region.

- In the Recovery Services vault, select your recovery plan.

- Perform the failover action and select the type of failover that has to be done (planned or unplanned).

- Well, assume that you are already monitoring the status in the target region, and wait until all the VMs that failed overcome up in the target region.

8. Failback to the Primary Region

Once the primary region is restored, you can fail to return to it.

- In the Recovery Services vault, select the replicated items.

- Click on Failback to initiate returning operations to the original region.

Conclusion

To implement the Azure Site Recovery, several significant tasks include:

- Creating a Recovery Services vault.

- Replicating Azure VMs.

- Setting up recovery plans.

- Testing.

Thus, by adhering to these steps, organizations can ensure that their applications stay up during planned and unplanned outages, which ultimately improves the disaster recovery goals. To ensure that the confidential plan reacts appropriately every time an incident arises, testing and revising the plan frequently is mandatory.