This post is a series of blog posts for Azure Site Recovery (ASR).

• ASR for VMs being hosted within Azure
• ASR for VMs being hosted On-Premises
• ASR for VMware hosted On-Premises

Here is a step by step walk-through on how to go about setting up and configuring ASR (Azure Site Recovery) and backing up your On-Premises Virtual Machines (VMs) with Azure Resource Manager (ARM).

First things, first, Azure’s Recovery Service Vault is a unified vault/resource that allows you to manage your backup and data disaster recovery needs within Azure. For example, if you are hosting your VMs on-premises you can create a link between your on-prem site and Azure to allow your VMs to be backed-up into Azure. This is regardless of your hypervisor, it can be either ESX or Hyper-V, either will work. However for the interest of this blog post, I will be setting up ASR for a Hyper-V 2012R2 host.

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Configuring Azure

Step 1: Create a Recovery Services Vault

Within Azure Resource Manager (ARM), if we select New, within the Marketplace, select Monitoring + management, then select Backup and Site Recovery (OMS) within the featured apps. Of course if this is no longer present, just search for it within the marketplace.

Next we will now need to create our vault.

Give it a meaningful name, and you can either create a new Resource Group, or use an existing. I opted with existing, as I will (another post) next setup a Site-to-Site ASR.

Give this a few seconds, maybe minutes to do its thing…

Great, now our Vault is up and ready to go!

Step 2: Choose your Protection Goal(s)

Click Settings > Site Recovery (Under Getting Stated) > Step 1: Prepare Infrastructure > Protection Goal > And specify the following > Click OK:

• Replicating to: Azure
• Machines Virtualized: Yes, with Hyper-V
• Using SCVMM (Virtual Machine Manager): No

Step 3: Setup the Source Environment

Next, we will now need to Prepare our source give our Hyper-V site a name, “Ravi-OnPrem” makes sense here, but give it something meaningful.

Now we need to download the ASR Provider Installer, along with the Vault Registration Key.

Step 4:  Install and Configure the ASR Provider on Hyper-V Host

This Hyper-V host is not behind any Proxy…

If we go back to Azure, we can now see our Hyper-V host populated.

Step 5: Create a Replication Policy

Within our Vault properties > Settings > Manage: Site Recovery Infrastructure > For Hyper-V Sites: Replication Policies > +Replication Policies

Step 6: Associate Hyper-V Site(s)

Next we will need to Associate our Hyper-V site:

Great! Now we can continue on with Step 3 (Target Environment) of Step 1 (Preparing Infrastructure).

Step 7: Create a Storage Account + Virtual Network

Within the Replication, we have a few options here. I left mine as default (GRS) Geo-Redundant.

Next, we need to create a Target Virtual Network:

Now we can go ahead and setup the replication settings:

Step 8: Setup Replication Settings

Since we create the Replication Policy beforehand, this auto-filled. Next we need to do some Capacity Planning. Since this is simply a walk-through example, I elected to skip this, but for a real-production environment, I would highly recommend doing this.

Here is a link to Microsoft’s Capacity Planner for Hyper-V Replica.

Hit OK, and now we are ready to to move on to Step 2 (Replication Application)

This all should have populated since we created our Storage account and Virtual Network just earlier… If not, add them.

Now Azure should have connected with our Hyper-V host, we can now see our VMs within our Hyper-V host. Here we now need to select which machines we will want to include within ASR. For simplicity and variety, I am going to select a domain controller and a Linux machine.

Now we need to configure the VMs properties:

Once we are good, we can go ahead and apply the Replication Policy to our VMs.

Once satisfied, go ahead and hit “Enable Replication“.

 

Lastly, Step 3, we now need to complete creating our Recovery Plan:

Step 9: Create Recovery Plan

Great! All done? Before we say all done, let’s go back to our Hyper-V host, and configure the Network/Throttling bandwidth.

Step 10: Network/Throttle Bandwidth

My Hyper-V host is not equipped with a GUI as I am using Windows 2012R2 Minimal Server, so navigate here to launch the Microsoft Azure Backup Agent, “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent\bin\“. Launch, “wabadmin“.

In the Actions pane, select “Change Properties” >> Select the Throttling tab.

Change these settings as to your needs. I wanted to increase my non-work hours to 4MB, but looks like 1MB is the max.

Great! Since we already hit, enable replication, this process should have already started… Let’s go back to Azure:

If we take a look at the Vault > Settings > Protected Items > Replicated Items 

Once these VMs are 100% Synchronized, the next steps will be to simulate a fail over, both Test and Planned.