Azure Site Recovery is Microsoft Azure’s built-in disaster recovery service, designed to keep your applications available during planned maintenance or unexpected failures. This service offers high availability by orchestrating the protection, failover, and recovery of your virtual machines. In this post, we will explore how to configure Azure Site Recovery for Azure resources.
Before you start, ensure that you’ve set up an Azure account and a Recovery Services vault on Azure portal.
Setup Azure Site Recovery
- Create a Recovery Services vault:
- Prepare the Source Environment:
- Prepare the Target Environment:
- Enable Replication:
Go to the Azure portal -> Recovery Services vaults -> Add. Fill in the details including Name, Subscription, Resource group, and Location. Click on Create.
Go to your Recovery Services vault -> Replicated items -> +Replicate. Fill in the Source details including Subscription and the Resource group your VM resides in. Specify the VM you want to replicate.
In the same configuration settings, specify your target settings including Subscription, Resource group, Virtual network, and Storage account. Azure Site Recovery can create these for you based on your source VM configuration.
Finally, click on Enable Replication. This will create the target environment (if not already created) and start the replication.
Test Azure Site Recovery
Once replication is enabled, you can test the failover to ensure your resources will correctly switch to the replicated environment.
Go to the Recovery Services vault -> Replicated items -> select your replicated VM -> Test Failover.
Here, select a recovery point to use for the failover. The latest (default) is usually the best. You have the option to use a separate network for test failovers. Once you have made your configuration choices, click on OK to start the failover.
You should now see that the test failover is in progress. Once complete, the status of your replicated items will show a Test failover is in progress. You can then access the VM in its new environment to check that all systems are functioning as expected.
Clean Up Test
After testing, it’s crucial to clean up the test failover.
Navigate to the Recovery Services vault -> Replicated items -> your replicated VM -> Cleanup test failover. This will remove the test failover and return the status to normal.
Failover & Failback
In an actual disaster scenario, you will need to failover your resources to the recovery environment.
Navigate to the Recovery Services vault -> Replicated items -> your replicated VM -> Failover. Choose the recovery point and click on OK.
Post-disaster, when your primary environment is once again stable, you can failback.
In your Recovery Services vault -> Replicated items -> select your VM -> Failback. You can then check the status of your failback progress in your vault.
Azure Site Recovery is an essential tool for Azure Administrators in managing disaster recovery scenarios. Preparing and testing your disaster recovery strategies by practicing these steps can make the real process much more manageable. For a successful AZ-104 exam, a strong grasp of Azure Site Recovery’s functionalities is highly essential.
Practice Test
True/False: Azure Site Recovery supports both asynchronous and synchronous replication for continuity and disaster recovery.
- Answer: True
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports both asynchronous and synchronous replication. This allows for a more flexible disaster recovery plan and ensures data integrity during a disaster, regardless of the data transfer speed.
Which of the following Azure resources can be protected by Azure Site Recovery? (Multiple Select)
- A. Virtual Machines
- B. SQL Database
- C. Storage Accounts
- D. App Services
– Answer: A & C
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports the protection of Azure Virtual Machines and Storage Accounts, allowing for seamless recovery in the event of a disaster.
To configure Azure Site Recovery, you must have a Recovery Services Vault in place.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: A
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery needs a Recovery Services Vault in order to replicate and store data. This is where all the recovery points and backup data are kept.
Azure Site Recovery supports what types of recovery?
- A. Planned
- B. Unplanned
- C. Both
- D. None
– Answer: C
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports both planned and unplanned recovery scenarios, ensuring a robust and flexible disaster recovery strategy.
Azure Site Recovery only supports replication within the same region.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: B
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports replication across regions ensuring high availability and minimizing the impact of a regional outage.
Which of the following must be installed on each machine you want to replicate in Azure Site Recovery?
- A. Azure Backup Agent
- B. Azure Site Recovery Provider
- C. Azure AD Connect
- D. Azure Information Protection Client
– Answer: B
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery Provider must be installed on each machine you want to replicate. It works together with the Recovery Services vault to coordinate and manage replicating, failover, and recovery of Azure VMs.
True/False: Azure Site Recovery is a service that helps you replicate and recover Virtual Machines to Azure storage.
- Answer: True
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery is a service for disaster recovery. It helps you to replicate and recover virtual machines to Azure storage in the event of a disaster occurrence.
Azure Site Recovery can be used on-premises for physical servers, virtual machines and databases.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: A
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports on-premises physical servers, virtual machines, and databases to provide full infrastructure disaster recovery.
With Azure Site Recovery, you can only fail-over the entire deployment, not individual machines.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: B
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports both full and partial fail-overs. You can choose to fail-over all machines or just specific ones, depending on the situation.
True/False: Azure Site Recovery does not support both Windows and Linux machines.
- Answer: False
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports both Windows and Linux machines. This provides greater flexibility and ensures continuity regardless of your operating system preference.
The Azure Site Recovery service aids in setting up disaster recovery to Azure, but it does not help to manage replication for Azure VMs.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: B
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery aids in setting up disaster recovery to Azure and also manages the ongoing replication of data, thereby providing a comprehensive disaster recovery solution.
Azure Site Recovery supports only Hyper-V based infrastructures.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: B
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports multiple infrastructures including those based on Hyper-V, VMware, and physical servers.
Azure Site Recovery can be used to migrate Azure resources from one region to another.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: A
– Explanation: One of the uses of Azure Site Recovery is for migration of Azure resources from one region to another, providing a seamless experience with minimal downtime.
Azure Site Recovery can replicate most workloads, including those running on Windows and Linux servers, whether they are on-premises or in the cloud.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: A
– Explanation: Azure Site Recovery is versatile and can replicate most workloads including those on both Windows and Linux servers, no matter if they are running on-premises or in the cloud.
It is not possible to automate the replication and failover process in Azure Site Recovery using Azure Automation.
- A. True
- B. False
– Answer: B
– Explanation: Not only is it possible to automate replication and failover processes in Azure Site Recovery, it is in fact encouraged so as to provide as seamless a transition as possible in the event of a failure. Azure Automation helps in achieving this.
Interview Questions
What is Azure Site Recovery and what is its primary use?
Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is a service provided by Microsoft Azure to ensure business continuity by keeping business apps operational during outages. ASR contributes to disaster recovery strategy by orchestrating replication, failover, and recovery of virtual machines.
What are the prerequisites for replicating an Azure VM with Azure Site Recovery?
The prerequisites to replicate an Azure VM with Azure Site Recovery are: an Azure account, a source and target Azure region, an Azure Storage account, the Azure Site Recovery Provider installation, and a Recovery Services vault.
What types of disaster recovery does Azure Site Recovery support?
Azure Site Recovery supports disaster recovery scenarios including on-premises to Azure, Azure to Azure, and on-premises to on-premises.
How does Azure Site Recovery help ensure compliance?
Azure Site Recovery provides continuous health monitoring, non-disruptive disaster recovery testing, and detailed reports to prove to stakeholders that your enterprise can recover following a disaster, helping to ensure compliance with various standards.
Can you move Azure resources to a different region using Azure Site Recovery?
Yes, Azure Site Recovery assists in moving Azure resources from one Azure region to another.
What is the role of Recovery Plan in Azure Site Recovery?
Recovery Plan in Azure Site Recovery is a document which contains the methodological actions for recovery from a disaster. It orchestrates the order of recovery for different tiers of an application and it can also automate the failover and recovery of the workload.
Can Linux machines be protected by Azure Site Recovery?
Yes, you can protect Linux machines by Azure Site Recovery. Both Windows and Linux machines are supported by ASR.
Who should use Azure Site Recovery?
Azure Site Recovery is primarily designed for use by system administrators responsible for maintaining IT infrastructure and ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery.
Is it possible to use Site Recovery for data archiving?
No, Site Recovery is not designed for long-term data archiving or backup storage. It’s primarily intended for disaster recovery.
Can Azure Site Recovery help in the migration of on-premises servers to Azure?
Yes, Azure Site Recovery not only provides business continuity for cloud resources, but it can also be used to migrate on-premises machines to Azure.
Is it possible to fail back from Azure to on-premises using Azure Site Recovery?
Yes, once primary sites are operational after an outage, you can fail back from Azure to your on-premises site using Azure Site Recovery.
What is the function of the Azure Site Recovery Provider?
The Azure Site Recovery Provider is a software component that manages communication and control between Protected and Recovery sites.
What kind of storage account is needed for Azure Site Recovery?
Azure Site Recovery requires a General-purpose v2 storage account, which supports Blob, File, Queue, and Table storage types.
What happens during a failover in Azure Site Recovery?
In a failover, Azure Site Recovery switches to the replica VM running the workload in the disaster recovery (DR) region. This process ensures the continuity of work even during disaster situations.
What are the steps to set up Azure Site Recovery?
The setup steps typically include creating a Recovery Services vault, specifying the source and target settings, enabling replication for the desired VMs, and creating and customizing recovery plans.
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