Moving Protected Virtual Machines to a Remote Site
You can move the virtual machines in a virtual protection group to AWS, where the virtual machines are replicated.
To initiate a move:
1. In the Zerto User Interface select ACTIONS > MOVE VPG.
The Move wizard is displayed.
2. Select the VPGs to move.
At the bottom, the selection details show the amount of data and the total number of virtual machines selected.
The Direction arrow shows the direction of the process: from the protected site to the peer, recovery, site.
3. Click NEXT.
The EXECUTION PARAMETERS step is displayed.
You can change the following values to use for the recovery:
■ Commit Policy
■ Force Shutdown policy
■ Keep Source VMs settings
You can also see if a boot order and scripts are defined for the VPG.
4. To change the commit policy, click on the field or select the VPG and click EDIT SELECTED.
a) To commit the recovery operation automatically, without any checking, select Auto-Commit and 0 minutes.
b) If you do not want an automatic commit or rollback, select None. You must manually commit or roll back.
To allow checking before committing or rolling back, specify an amount of time to check the recovered machines, in minutes, before the automatic commit or rollback action is performed. During this time period, check that the new virtual machines are OK and then commit the operation or roll it back. The maximum amount of time you can delay the commit or rollback operation is 1440 minutes, which is 24 hours.
5. To specify the shutdown policy, double-click the VM Shutdown field. If the virtual machines cannot be gracefully shut down, for example if a utility such as VMware Tools or Microsoft Integration Services is not installed on one of the virtual machines in the VPG, the Move operation fails unless you specify that you want to force the shutdown. If a utility is installed on the protected virtual machines, the procedure waits five minutes for the virtual machines to be gracefully shut down before forcibly powering them off.
6. To prevent the protected virtual machines or vCD vApp from being deleted in the protected site, click the Keep source VMs checkbox.
IMPORTANT:
■ The virtual machines or vCD vApp will be removed from the other VPGs that are protecting them if the following conditions apply:
■ The virtual machines or vCD vApp are already protected in other VPGs
■ Reverse protection is specified
■ Keep Source VMs is not checked
■ If your VPG has a vCD vApp, or if there are no other virtual machines left to protect, the entire VPG will be removed.
■ Protecting virtual machines or vCD vApps in several VPGs is enabled only if both the protected site and the recovery site, as well as the VRAs installed on these sites, are of version 5.0 and higher.
7. Click NEXT.
■ When reverse protection is specified for a VPG residing on a vCD site that is replicating to either a vSphere or Hyper-V site, the boot order settings will not reserve the start delay vCD vApp settings for virtual machines with the same order number.
The MOVE step is displayed. The topology shows the number of VPGs and virtual machines being moved to each peer site. In the following example, 2 VPGs will be moved to Site6-Ent2-R2, and they contain 5 virtual machines; and 1 VPG will be moved to Site5-Ent2-P2-R2 and it contains 2 virtual machines.
8. Click START MOVE to start the migration.
9. If a commit policy was set with a timeout greater than zero, as described in step
4, you can check the new instances on AWS before they are removed from the protected site.
Note: If an instance exists on the recovery site with the same name as a virtual machine being migrated, the machine is moved and named in the recovery site with a number added as a suffix to the name, starting with the number 1.
The status icon changes to orange and an alert is issued, to warn you that the procedure is waiting for either a commit or rollback.
All testing done during this period, before committing or rolling back the Move operation, is written to EBS disks. These virtual disks are automatically defined by AWS when the new instances are created.
Note: You cannot take a snapshot of a virtual machine before the Move operation is committed and the data from the journal promoted to EBS disks, since the virtual machine volumes are still managed by the VRA and not directly by the virtual machine. Taking a snapshot of a machine that is in the process of being moved will corrupt that machine.
10. Check the virtual machines on the recovery site, then either:
■ Wait for the specified Commit Policy time to elapse, and the specified operation, either Commit or Rollback, is performed automatically.
■ Or, in the specific VPG tab, click the Commit or Rollback icon (
).
■ Click Commit to confirm the commit.
■ Click Rollback to roll back the operation, removing the virtual machines that were created on the recovery site and rebooting the machines on the protected site. The Rollback dialog is displayed to confirm the rollback.
You can also commit or roll back the operation via the TASKS popup dialog in the status bar, or by selecting MONITORING > TASKS.
■ After the new instances are up and running and committed in the recovery site, the powered off virtual machines in the protected site are removed from the protected site.
■ Finally, data is copied from the S3 buckets to the EBS disks attached to the new instances in AWS.
■ While data is being copied, the new instances are not available.
Notes:
■ If virtual machines or vCD vApp are already protected in several VPGs, and reverse protection is configured, the virtual machines or vCD vApp are deleted from the protected site. This will result in the removal of these virtual machines from other VPGs that are protecting them and to the journals of these VPGs to be reset. In the event of vCD vApp or if no other virtual machines are left to protect, the entire VPG will be removed.
Protecting virtual machines in several VPGs is enabled only if both the protected site and the recovery site, as well as the VRAs installed on these sites, are of version 5.0 and higher.
■ If Keep Source VMs is selected, the protected virtual machines are not removed from the protected site.
Protecting virtual machines in several VPGs is enabled only if both the protected site and the recovery site, as well as the VRAs installed on these sites, are of version 5.0 and higher.
The protected virtual machines are created as new instances in EC2. The default value for new instances in Zerto Virtual Replication is m3.xlarge except in the Asia Pacific (Seoul) region where they are defined as m4.xlarge instances. If these instances do not meet your needs, you can change this value in the Policies tab of the Site Settings dialog, see
“Configuring Disaster Recovery Policies”, on page 78. You can also change the instance type of new instances when you create or edit a VPG.
If you did not define a private IP for a virtual machine in the VPG definition, during recovery AWS sets the private IP from the defined subnet range.
Note: If the new instances do not power on, the process continues and the new instances must be manually powered on.
