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Implement
DR Replication
for Your Virtual
Infrastructure
in Just 5 Steps
By David Davis

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Top 5 Problems with Todays

Virtualization Disaster
Recovery Tools

that picture for backup purposes. But dont

confuse virtual machine snapshots from the
vSphere Client with a real backup. Real virtual
machine backup tools have features such as
individual file level restore, replication, deduplication of backup data and incremental blocklevel backup. Hypervisor snapshots dont offer
any of these features, all of which are crucial for
the virtualization admin. Thus, snapshots are no
substitute for a virtualization replication tool.

Selecting the right disaster recovery tool to protect

your virtual infrastructure is one of the most important decisions an organization can makebut it isnt
an easy one. There are as many tools as there are
disaster recovery scenarios, and all of them claim to
be the best option. But both the tools themselves
and the process of finding one are fraught with
problems, such as:

5. Offsite Backup vs. Replication. Much of the

complexity around backup, recovery, and disaster
recovery today is related to the need to perform
local VM recovery as well as remote VM recovery
in the event of a disaster. Today, companies are
forced to use different tools for each job. They
might have one tool that snapshots all VMs to
perform backups and another tool that snapshots all VMs to perform replication. Using
multiple tools to perform local recovery vs.
offsite replication is inefficient, can cause slowness for end users and is a management hassle.
Plus, the tools backup and replication intervals
may be vastly different.

1. Too Many Tools. Simply put, there are too many

tools to choose from. Youll find backup/recovery
tools, disaster recovery tools, replication tools and
combinations of all the above built into hardware
or software. The sheer process of wading through
the options can be overwhelming.
2. Mixed Messages. When it comes to selecting a
tool, every company claims to be the best and
every company claims that its unique features
differentiate it from the competition. You dont
have time to test them all, so you need expert
information to help you cut through the hype.
(Thats what this whitepaper is for.)

Disaster Recovery Disaster

3. Differing Designs. Each tool has a different

design to backup/recover/replicate your virtual
infrastructure. Each vendor says that their
design is superior. However, there are vast
differences in the potential downtime to critical
applications due to backup/replication tasks, the
impact of the backups on virtual infrastructure
performance, how fast they can recover virtual
machines (and how many at one time), and the
scalability of the design. These varying designs
make it impossible to do a true apples-apples
comparison between the numerous backup/DR
tools that are available today.

For most companies today, disaster recovery is still

a disaster. Virtual infrastructures are in the midst of
being converted from physical to virtual. Tape drives are
still used to recover data. Multiple tools are still being
used. Recovery plans are untested. And, in general, IT
hasnt been able to put a solid DR plan in place because
of the mountain of complexities related to DR.
However, Id be willing to bet that if you had all of
your critical servers virtualized and if you had an easy
and affordable tool for VM recovery and replication,
many of those complexities would go away.

4. Snapshots vs. Backups. There is a lot of

confusion between snapshots and backups.
Snapshots are not backups. A virtual machine
snapshot takes a picture of a VM at a point in
time. vSphere admins can revert a VM back to a
snapshot that was taken. Snapshots are almost
always taken manually by the VMware admin
for purposes such as preserving the state of a
VM prior to an upgrade. Some backup tools use

PHD vs The Competition

In my experience, PHD is different from the competition in a number of ways.

1. One Job for Backup and Replication. One of the
single greatest design differences between PHD
and the competition is PHDs unique design,
which performs a single backup of virtual

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machines and then allows you to use that

backup for replication. With this architecture,
the critical applications running in the virtual
infrastructure dont have to be interrupted a
second time to perform replication.

thought it would be very complex. I was surprised at

how easy it was.
The general overview of the steps I performed is:
1. Install and configure

2. Virtual Appliance Deployment. PHD deploys as

a virtual appliance, meaning theres no need to
purchase a Windows OS license. As a result,
you can deploy your backup/replication tool
faster than ever.

2. Perform initial backup

3. vSphere Plugin with the PHD vSphere Client

plugin, you can perform backup, recovery, and
replication all from the vSphere Client, that you
are already using every day.

5. Verify replication and test replicated virtual

machines

In more detail, heres what I did

4. Open Export & Open Restore. PHD allows you

to export VMs from your existing backups for
long-term or offsite storage using an openstandard OVF format.

1. Install and Configure

3. Add a backup store to be used for replication

4. Select the virtual machines you want to replicate

I installed the PHD manager plugin on my local

Windows client where I run the vSphere Client.

5. Mass Restore. With this feature, you can quickly

multiple virtual machines in a single job when
disaster strikes.

I deployed the PHD virtual backup appliance

OVF to a host at each of my two virtual
datacenters. In my case, I assumed that the
same vCenter server managed both my
primary and secondary datacenters. If thats not
the case for you, this will still work. I wont go
into a lot of detail because this is relatively easy.
You can watch a video on how to do it here.

Demand More From Your Backup Tool

Your backup tool shouldnt be just a backup tool.
Think of your backup/recovery/DR tool as a recovery
tool that can recover your data no matter whether it
is stored at a primary site or secondary site. The tool should be able to
backup your data just once and use
that back up data for recovery at any
site, as efficiently as possible.
Expect more from your recovery
tool! Replication should be integrated
and easy.

5 Steps to DR Replication

To most people, the idea of replicating virtual machines from one

datacenter to another is either too
complex or simply impossible. Prior
to installing the PHD appliances and
replicating my data, as shown below,
I was one of those people who

Recommended Actions for Initial PHD VBA Configuration

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As this was a lab environment, I used the

default DHCP configuration for networking.
I then entered my hypervisor credentials on
each of the VBAs and added a separate CIFS
share (the tool also supports a local virtual
disk or NFS).

Entering Hypervisor Credentials

Performing Initial Backup Through the vSphere Client

Configuring a CIFS Share for Backup Storage

Backing Up a Single VM

2. Perform Initial Backup
PHD replication works off of the backup jobs
that are created. You are only going to replicate
a VM that was already backed up. This is very
beneficial, as you dont have to disrupt the
virtual infrastructure a second time to perform
a replication.
Thus, I took a single virtual machine at my
primary datacenter (called TIER1-APP) and
performed a backup job on it.

Backing Up to the Primary Datacenter VBA

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4. Select the virtual machines you want to replicate

Next, we need to select the virtual machines
that we want to replicate from the primary
datacenter to the secondary datacenter. I
selected my Tier 1 App and clicked Replicate.
Verifying the Backup Job Completed in the Catalog

With your backup job completed, you are now

ready to replicate!
3. Add a backup store to be used for replication
To replicate, you need to add the primary
datacenter backup store to the DR site VBA.

Selecting VMs to Replicate

This will spawn a replication job. Here, you can

select to append _replica to the VMs that will
be created at the DR site, select what virtual
machine datastore you want the replicated
virtual machines stored on, and what virtual
machine network you want the replicated
virtual machines connected to.
Discovering Backup Storage for Replication is Easy

Selecting a Backup Storage Location

Configuring the Replication Job

Save the New Backup Storage Location

Specifying When to Replicate

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Now, if you go into the Replication area, youll

find virtual machines under the Replicated
Virtual Machines tab. These virtual machines
are ready to test or failover and use, immediately,
should the primary site fail.

To see how this is done, in under 5 minutes,

watch this video: VM Replication with PHD
Virtual Backup for VMware vSphere.

Individually Tweaking Replicated VM Datastores and Networks

Next, specify when you want to replicate. In

other words, how current will the virtual
machines at the DR site be?

Summary

Thanks to the unique design that uses virtual

appliances and utilizes already backed-up virtual
machines for replication, replicating virtual machines
from a primary to secondary datacenter is easy. With no
experience using the product, I was able to download
the trial of PHD Virtual Backup, install it, deploy the
VBAs, backup a VM, replicate that VM, and test it in
just a couple of hours. I recommend that you look at
your infrastructure, move to 100 percent virtualization,
and employ a virtualization backup tool that offers easy
deployment and integrated replication.

Optionally, you can individually tweak

datastores and virtual networks of the virtual
machines being replicated.
While the first virtual machine replication
may take some time, subsequent replications
wont take long at all, thanks to change block
tracking.
5. Verify replication and test replicated virtual
machines
Now, verify that virtual machine replications
were successful. You can do this in the job
history (the same place where you view backup
and restore job history).

About the Author

David Davis is the author of the

best-selling VMware vSphere video
training library from TrainSignal. He
has written hundreds of virtualization
articles on the Web, is a vExpert, VCP,
VCAP-DCA, and CCIE #9369 with more
than 18 years of enterprise IT experience.
His personal Website is VMwareVideos.com.

Verifying Replication Jobs