Running a Veeam Replication Failover Plan

If your production site goes offline after a disaster, you can perform full site failover by running a configured failover plan.

A full failover is the scenario where you are relying on the the replicated VMs stored at Zettagrid, due to a scenario where your local infrastructure is not up and running. Not to be confused with Partial Failovers, the differences with the Partial Failover compared to the Full Failover is only the NEA/Edge at Zettagrid is involved.

The Full Failover assumes there is no infrastructure left at the client side and the failover has to be triggered using the Failover Plan(s) via one of the three options below:

Client triggered via the Veeam Cloud Connect Client Portal using the user credentials provided.
Upon a request by the client through the Zettagrid Operations Center the Failover Plan corresponding to the client is started on behalf of the client^
Client triggered via the Veeam Backup & Replication Console, though this is unlikely as the assumption is the scenario triggering the Failover has taken out all on premises infrastructure and systems.^^

In a Full Failover situation, the Network Extension Appliance becomes the default gateway for every network created in the hardware plan, and is used to publish services running in failed over VMs to internet.

Running the Failover Plan via the Cloud Connect Portal

Depending on the Zettagrid Zone your service is replicated to, open up a web browser and head to:

Enter in the credentials found on the Secirty Tab of the Veeam Cloud Connect service page on the Zettarid MyAccount Page

With a cloud failover plan, you can perform full site failover at any time. You can fail over to the most recent VM state or select the necessary restore point for VMs in the cloud failover plan.

To fail over to the VM replicas latest restore point:

Log in to Veeam Cloud Connect Portal. The Failover Plans view will automatically open.
Select the Failover Plan and click Start.
Select the Start now option and click Start.

To fail over to a certain restore point:

Log in to Veeam Cloud Connect Portal. The Failover plans view will automatically open.
Select the Failover Plan and click Start.
Select the Start to most recent replica prior to option, select the replication date and time and click Start. That will find the closest restore point prior to the entered value for each VM and fail over to it.

Once executed you are taken to the Session Information Menu and can monitor the Failover Plan from there.

Monitoring the Failove Plan Execution via the Cloud Connect Portal

You can monitor the Failover Plan execution process as well as view results for finished failover tasks. Every run of a Failover operation and VM processing initiates a new session. When you start or undo Failover Plan, the Sessions History section automatically opens. You can also access the Sessions History section manually at any time. The summary information in the Sessions History section provides the following data:

Failover Plan and VM replica status,
Date of failover task start and finish.
Detailed information on every VM processing and cloud failover plan session.

Undoing the Failover Plan via the Cloud Connect Portal

You can undo the failover for all VMs replicas added to the cloud failover plan at once. When you undo failover, you are switching the workloads back to the original VMs and discard all changes that were made to VM replicas during failover.

To undo a Failover Plan, log into the Cloud Connect Poral, select the Failover Plan and click the Undo Button.

Running the Failover Plan via the Veeam Backup & Replication Console

If for some reason you are required to trigger a Failover and you have access to a Veeam Backup & Recovery Console you can trigger the Failover Plan.

From the Backup & Replication Menu under Replicas and Failover Plans, right click on the Failover Plan and from here you have two options:

Start ? Will use your last completed VM replica of those contained in the Failover Plan
Start to ? ? Will allow you to choose the most recent Restore Point made prior to the selected data and time

Selecting the Start option will begin the Failover process and the Executing Failover Plan window will appear.

Each VM Replica is booted up along with the Network Extension Appliance that is deployed at Zettagrid once booted and active the NEA will act as the Edge Gateway device so that VM services can be accessed as per the configured rules and IP mappings. Once all VM replica?s are booted and the NEA with routing between the networks has been completed, you should be able to access your services via the configured IP addresses.

Finalizing Failover Plans

Failover is a temporary intermediate step that needs to be finalized. The finalizing options for a cloud failover are similar to a regular failover: undoing failover, permanent failover or failback.

Undoing full site failover switches the replica back to the production VM discarding all changes that were made to the replica while it was running. When you undo full site failover, Veeam Backup & Replication detects VMs for which the failover operation was performed during the last cloud failover plan session and switches them back to production VMs. If you perform the failback operation for some of the VMs before undoing the group failover, failed-over VMs are skipped from processing.

Veeam Backup & Replication starts the undo failover operation for a group of 5 VMs at the same time. The time interval between the operation starts is 10 seconds. For example, if you have added 10 VMs to the failover plan, Veeam Backup & Replication will undo failover for the first 5 VMs in the list, then will wait for 10 seconds and undo failover for the remaining 5 VMs in the list. Time intervals between the operation starts help Veeam Backup & Replication reduce the workload on the production environment and Veeam backup server.

If you decide to perform permanent failover or failback to production, you need to process every VM in the cloud failover plan individually. However, you can undo failover for the whole group of VMs using the undo cloud failover plan option.

^ Service Charges maybe applied
^^ The Client use an alternative copy of the Veeam B&R Console from any location, login via the Service Provider menu and trigger the Failover Plan, however if not setup prior this will take time.