Protecting a virtual machine - Cloud to Cloud

Owned by John Hicks
Last updated: Nov 13, 2023 by Robert Brink
4 min read

Introduction

This guide is for performing a Cloudist VDC virtual machine protection to another Cloudist VDC site.

Prerequisites

 You must be onboarded in the Cloudist Portal and have:

  • A provisioned Virtual Data Center in the Cloudist VDC service

  • Your customer/organization number

  • Your username and password

To create a specific account to use for DR purposes:

  • Log in to https://portal.cloudist.se

  • Select Virtual Data Center service

  • Select the Region you would like to create the account in (it is recommended to create one in the source and destination regions for Cloud to Cloud protection)

  • Click Log in to VDC

  • Go to Administration, Access Control, Users and click New

  • Enter a username, password and ensure the User has the Organization Administrator role

  • Click Save

The username in this example when using DRaaS would be drservice@12345-5678 (your org number)

Preparing destination networking

 

Protecting a workload from one site to another ensures that the virtual machine is replicated as per the chosen SLA profile in the guide below.

However, DRaaS does not provide fail over/DR services for your networking solution, be that an Edge Gateway or something physical/third party virtual firewall.

You must therefore you may want to consider:

  • What your networking solution should be at the destination site

  • Routinely testing this solution so that it operates as expected before disaster

  • Documenting your DR plan. What needs to change from a networking perspective once workloads are failed over?

Protecting a virtual machine Cloud to Cloud

 

  • Select the Virtual Datacenter you want to protect to or from (this can be managed from both source and destination) and click name of Virtual Datacenter

  • Once logged into your VDC, click More, then Availability

  • Go to Incoming Replications

  • Click on the New protection icon

  • Provide the credentials configured at the source site

    • username: username@org-number

  • Ensure Source Site is set correctly, since this is an incoming protection, the site is different from the one we are currently working in

  • Select a VM/vApp to protect and click Next

 

  • Choose the VDC you would like to migrate to

  • Choose the Storage Policy the virtual machine should be recovered on, then click Next

 

  • Choose an appropriate SLA profile for the replication

  • Choose whether to Exclude disks that are not required for replication

  • Choose to whether to Configure Seed VMs if you have perhaps an already replicated older copy

  • Review the Ready To Complete summary and click Finish to begin the first replication

    • In this example, we are protecting to SE-Central, from SE-North

 

  • Observe the progress of the initial configuration and replication

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