Azure Site Recovery is a useful service provided by Microsoft Azure that can help administrators ensure business continuity in their applications by keeping applications online even if the primary source goes offline. With Azure Site Recovery, we can perform failover to a secondary region to maintain our application’s availability. Today we will discuss how to perform failover to a secondary region using Azure Site Recovery, which could be a potential topic for the AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator exam.
To start, it’s crucial to understand how Azure Site Recovery helps protect your resources. It replicates workloads running on physical and virtual machines (VMs) from a primary site to a secondary location. If an outage occurs at your primary site, you fail over to a secondary site to keep apps available. You fail back when the primary location is running again.
Step 1: Prepare Azure infrastructure
The first step is to set up the infrastructure in Azure. This entails preparing the source and target environments. The Source Preparation involves getting the infrastructure ready on Azure where applications are currently running. Target preparation involves setting up the alternate standby infrastructure where you can shift your applications in case of any issue.
A Recovery Services Vault is an entity in Azure that stores the recovery points created over time. It also holds the backup policies that are associated with the protected virtual machines.
Step 2: Enable Replication
After setting up the infrastructure, the next step is to enable replication for the virtual machine. Replication is the process where data from the source is continuously copied and transferred to the target location to ensure that at any point in time.
Step 3: Plan and Implement a failover
In case of a disaster, the next logical step is to plan and implement a failover. At this stage, our replicated data is serving as the near-real-time backup. We must now implement a failover from our primary source to our standby secondary source to ensure continuous availability.
When the failover is initiated, Azure recreates the virtual machine in the secondary site using the replicated data and the data from the source machine is continuously synchronized to enable smooth operation.
To initiate the failover,
- Select the Recovery Services vault.
- Choose the “Replicated items” button, and select your machine from the list.
- Choose the “Failover” button.
- In the “Failover” blade that opens, select a recovery point that exists in the secondary region, and acknowledge having read & understood the details and click “Ok”.
Step 4: Plan and Implement a failback
Once the issue with the primary source is resolved, you can failback to the primary source. To initiate a failback,
- Select “Recovery Plans” from the dashboard of the Recovery Service vault.
- Select your recovery plan from the list.
- In the recovery plan details, from the “Essentials” tab, select the “Failover” action and then select “Fail back”.
In summary, ensuring the availability of applications is crucial, and Azure Site Recovery provides the ability to ensure that replication is performed efficiently and failover to a secondary region happens smoothly in case of an issue with the primary source.
Though this is just a brief overview of the concept, do check Microsoft documentation for more in-depth knowledge, especially while preparing for the AZ-104 Microsoft Azure Administrator exam. By providing real-world examples like the one above and including potential situations from everyday tasks, candidates would be better equipped to take the exam.
Practice Test
True or False: Azure Site Recovery is a service within Microsoft Azure used for disaster recovery.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Site Recovery provides disaster recovery by orchestrating replication, failover and recovery of virtual machines.
Which of the following is not a prerequisite to use Azure Site Recovery for failover?
- a. Sufficient available storage
- b. Associated network permissions
- c. Active subscription to Office 365
- d. Virtual network in the secondary region
Answer: c. Active subscription to Office 365
Explanation: To perform failover using Azure Site Recovery, you don’t need an active subscription to Office However, you need sufficient storage, network permissions, and a virtual network in the secondary region.
True or False: Azure Site Recovery supports replication of Azure virtual machines from one Azure region to another.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports cross-region disaster recovery by replicating Azure VMs from one Azure region to another.
During Azure Site Recovery, when can you apply network settings from the recovery plan?
- a. Before failover
- b. During failover
- c. After failover
- d. Both before and after failover
Answer: b. During failover
Explanation: Network settings are typically defined as part of the recovery plan and applied during failover.
True or False: You need to manually prepare VMs for failover in Azure Site Recovery.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Site Recovery prepares the VMs automatically as part of the failover and failback process.
What is the term used in Azure Site Recovery for the process of reverse-replicating after a successful failover?
- a. Fallback
- b. Failback
- c. Fallforward
- d. Failforward
Answer: b. Failback
Explanation: The term “failback” is used for the process of reverse-replication after a successful failover.
In Azure Site Recovery, what do recovery points enable you to do?
- a. Store data
- b. Store VMs
- c. Back up files
- d. Restore to a point in time
Answer: d. Restore to a point in time
Explanation: Recovery points are used to restore your system to a specific point in time during the failover process.
True or False: Azure Site Recovery can only replicate data, not applications.
- True
- False
Answer: False
Explanation: Azure Site Recovery can replicate both data and applications for comprehensive failover coverage.
Which of the following is not a supported replication scenario in Azure Site Recovery?
- a. Azure to Azure
- b. on-premises to Azure
- c. Azure to on-premises
- d. on-premises to on-premises
Answer: c. Azure to on-premises
Explanation: Azure Site Recovery supports Azure to Azure replication, on-premises to Azure replication, and on-premises to on-premises replication. But it does not support Azure to on-premises replication scenario.
True or False: Performing failover on Azure Site Recovery requires downtime for your application.
- True
- False
Answer: True
Explanation: While the service minimizes downtime, there is still a brief period required for the failover process to complete, during which the application may be unavailable.
Interview Questions
What is Azure Site Recovery?
Azure Site Recovery is a Microsoft Azure service that provides data replication, disaster recovery, and failover capabilities. This service allows businesses to keep their applications running during planned and unplanned outages.
What is the purpose of performing the failover to a secondary region while using Azure Site Recovery?
Performing failover to a secondary region while using Azure Site Recovery helps in providing continuous business operations during a region-wide outage. It facilitates disaster recovery by managing and orchestrating replication, failover, and failback of Azure resources.
What are the key steps for performing a failover in Azure Site Recovery?
The primary steps include: Initiating a failover operation in the Azure Site Recovery, ensuring that the failover operation completes successfully, verifying the correct operation of the application in the secondary region, and finally re-protecting the application for future failovers.
What happens to the primary region during the failover process with Azure Site Recovery?
During the failover process, the primary region is down due to a disaster or is deliberately shut down during a planned failover.
Is performing a planned failover to a secondary region in Azure Site Recovery disruptive to the workloads running in the primary region?
No, a planned failover is not disruptive. An up-to-date copy of workloads from the primary region is running in the secondary region before the planned failover is initiated.
How does Azure Site Recovery provide redundancy and resilience?
Azure Site Recovery provides redundancy and resilience by creating and maintaining secondary copies of your virtual machines and services in a separate region, allowing you to switch over to them if the primary region goes down.
Can Azure Site Recovery help in migrating applications to Azure?
Yes, Azure Site Recovery is not just for disaster recovery. It can also be used as a migration tool to move workloads from an on-premises location to Azure.
How do you initiate a failback operation after a failover has occurred in Azure Site Recovery?
To initiate a failback operation after a failover, you would start a failback from the Recovery Service vault in the secondary region. Azure Site Recovery handles the rest, replicating changes back to the primary region and, eventually, failing back to the primary region.
Which recovery plan should be used in Azure Site Recovery to orchestrate a failover to a secondary region?
The recovery plan must be associated with the target replication policy. This recovery plan defines the order in which machines are failed over, and allows you to insert manual actions or scripts into the failover process.
Does Azure Site Recovery support automated failover?
Yes, Azure Site Recovery supports both manual and automated failover actions. The automated failover ensures that your workloads are available in the secondary region when the primary region is experiencing an outage.
Can you perform testing without affecting production workloads or ongoing replication in Azure Site Recovery?
Yes, Azure Site Recovery provides a test failover option which allows you to test your disaster recovery plan without impacting the production environment.
What is the role of the ‘Re-Protect’ option in Azure Site Recovery?
After a successful failover, the ‘Re-Protect’ option is used to reverse the direction of replication from the secondary region back to the primary region, ensuring that the application stays protected in case of another failover event.
Do you need to perform any DNS changes after the failover in Azure Site Recovery?
Yes, you would need to update your DNS to redirect network traffic from the primary to the secondary region, post-failover.
How do you verify a successful failover in Azure Site Recovery?
A successful failover in Azure Site Recovery can be verified using the Azure portal. All the steps of the failover, including the recovery point time, complete successfully and the status of the entity changes to ‘Protected’ post-failover.
How long does Azure Site Recovery retain the recovery points?
Azure Site Recovery retains recovery points for the last 24 hours for Azure VMs and 72 hours for on-premises VMs to Azure.
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