Veeam Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure: How to Restore to Microsoft Azure
Veeam Backup & Replication 9.5 introduced a new capability, Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure. I am certain that many customers are finding this functionality to be very useful! In my previous two posts, I discussed the setup of Veeam 9.5 Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure as well as How to Deploy the Veeam Azure Proxy Server. Now these previous posts cover the pre-requisites to the restoration process, which is the topic of this post. One of the benefits that Direct Restore to Azure provides is the ability to recover or migrate workloads out to Microsoft’s public cloud, Azure. Veeam backup files are self contained images of the workload making restores of all Veeam types possible! This means that you can recover VMware VMs, Hyper-V VMs or even application workloads that have been protected by Veeam Endpoint Backup / Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows or Veeam Agent for Linux. Yes, even physical servers, laptops, desktops or ‘other’ cloud instances can be restored directly to your Azure subscription too!
In this example, we will restore a Linux machine that was protected using the newest product in the Veeam portfolio, Veeam Agent for Linux. Lets get to it!
What does the restore process look like?
First you’ll need to navigate over to the disks area within Backup & Replication and choose the virtual machine (VM) or the agent backup that you would like to recover out to your Microsoft Azure subscription, was previously added within the Veeam environment.
Many of these steps will look familiar to the deployment of the Veeam Azure Proxy Server that we setup previously, however you’ll next pick the Azure deployment mode.
Choose your subscription, location and which Azure Proxy Server you would like to leverage. While it is an option you should consider it to be a best practice to utilize the Azure Proxy Server.
In the first post of this series (linked above) we deployed the Linux helper appliance. In the wizard if you choose an Azure Region (Datacenter) that does not have the Linux helper appliance already created, you’ll be prompted to do that. Obviously, the Linux appliance is only required to restore Linux servers.
Choosing the VM size is next. This is achieved by choosing Edit and then picking the appropriate size of VM. Note, there’s different costs for each VM size so you’ll want to consult the Azure VM price list.
The Resource Group selection step allows you to specify either an existing Resource Group or to create a new one. By default the Create a new resource group radio button is selected.
The Network selection steps allows you to specify the virtual network that the VM will be placed on. This affects the communication of this VM with the other VMs inside of your Resource Group and within your subscription.
At this point Veeam begins the restoration process. Since they’re left in a stopped / deallocated state the Azure Proxy Server and the Linux helper appliance are powered on and the restore commences!
The Azure Activity monitor makes it easy to view the progress of your restore job. Another cool part of the activity log is to actually see the JSON that Azure is using to perform the actions. Here we can see that my azureproxy001 was being started and the corresponding JSON.
The VM is in the powered on state with a public IP address you can test to make sure that the VM is fully recovered and accessible.
Summary
Veeam 9.5, Direct Restore to Microsoft Azure provides IT Professionals the ability to perform restores as well as migrations from their on-premises or even public cloud based workloads to Microsoft Azure. I hope you can see just how simple and easy it is to get everything up and running.
Share your comments below! I am excited to see how everyone will be using this great capability.
