Part 1-Setting Up DR Orchestration Using Veeam Availability Orchestrator

In this post we are going to look into how to build DR orchestrate using Veeam Availability Orchestrator (VAO).

VAO is an add-on for Veeam Availability Suite to orchestrate disaster recovery task, allowing DR plan creation, testing and execution and documentation in Vmware vSphere environment.

At this moment, it won't work for Hyper-V environment.

You can use VAO to

[Pre-requisite]

• Environment :- Vmware 5.x, 6.x
• Vcenter with vm tag
• Veeam Backup & Replication v9.5 update 3 -Enterprise Plus
• Installation of the VAO server on a machine already running Veeam products is not supported
• SQL Server

[Lab Environment]

• Single VAO environment - mean multiple Production sites, but one DR site
• Install VAO on a single server
• will install embedded VBR 
• will install embedded Veeam One
• VAO components
• Use SQL Express

[Access VAO Server]

Use browser to access VAO UI:

https://<vao server>:9898

Once access, you can follow the configuration wizard to perform initial configuration.
1st step, set as DR site for 1st VAO Installation.

You can set initial setting to connect to standalone VBR Server & Vcenter. Else skip first.
To add these settings later, you can use the wizard to configure.

STEP 1:- Connect to Infrastructure

• Connect to VBR Server to inventory Veeam data
• Connect to vCenter to inventory Vmware vsphere infrastructure object

STEP 2:- Manage Access
Then enable the component before it visible for use.

• Enable VM Group

• Enable Plan Steps

• Enable Credential

• Enable Virtual Lab

 After you create a virtual lab on any Veeam Backup & Replication server in the DR VAO site, VAO will discover the virtual lab and make it available in the VAO UI.

VAO will not discover virtual lab which located in Production Site.

• Enable Templates Job

To protect VM included in the plan after failover, you need to create a backup job at the DR Site.

Criteria:-

a) Create an empty folder in VM & templates - in VCenter

b) put [VAO Template] text in Job description

c) Select the folder that you've created earlier

d) The backup job must not contain any VMs

After job created, VAO will collect and display in the VAO UI.

STEP 3:- Add Users to Roles

We assigned Domain Admins Group with the role: Site Administrators.

STEP 4: Configure an email notification

That should do the trick. We have complete setup VAO and ready for use.
Stay tuned for Part 2- Click here (ready soon)