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Hi Community

Looking for a DR option that would help us leverage Cloud storage. We have an on-prem VBR server with a pair of local repositories. We would like to backup a portion of our our Local VM infrastructure to S3 as part of our DR strategy and in the even of a DR incident leaving our primary data center offline we would like to be able to restore these instances from S3 to EC2. 

2 problems i see instantly are the lack of access to the backup server if the primary datacenter is offline and the VMs communicating unless we use the same network segment on EC2 when we spin up the environment. Anyone see a way to do this short of replicating all the needed VMs to EC2 in an offline state?

I believe this can be done with replication of the VMs to EC2 and the file shares to S3 Active and even orchestrated but I was hoping for a less expensive option as well.

Hi @MikeN be aware because from V12 is not possible to use same S3 bucket on 2 different VBR server 


Hi @MikeN be aware because from V12 is not possible to use same S3 bucket on 2 different VBR server 

Great point, it's ok to use just to restore, but you can't write data in the same repository on two different servers. 


You could replicate in to EC2 from Veeam but no other way around not having a backup VBR server if the main one goes offline.  Only way to restore from the S3.


I think you can do backup copy to S3 to have a copy of the data on AWS.

Regarding to restore, the best option would be a EC2 instance with VBR already installed and power off. In the case of a DR you can power on this instance, perform a configuration restore and perform the restore to EC2. 


Hi @MikeN be aware because from V12 is not possible to use same S3 bucket on 2 different VBR server 

Great point, it's ok to use just to restore, but you can't write data in the same repository on two different servers. 

I'm sure about that because our client uses this mode to have a "Disaster Recovery". In V11 this operation was abled provided that on first VBR server repository was set in Mantainance mode. After upgrading to V12 was not possible to use same bucket.


@MikeN : what I should do like mentioned before.

Create a VM in EC2, install VBR but no real configuration. Turn the VM off.

In case of a DR, just add the S3 bucket in the DR-VBR so you can restore the necessary.


Thanks for the feedback everyone. Would it be practical to replicate the VBR server to EC2 with the rest of my critical servers. Should I need it I simply bring it online from EC2?


Hi @MikeN be aware because from V12 is not possible to use same S3 bucket on 2 different VBR server 

Great point, it's ok to use just to restore, but you can't write data in the same repository on two different servers. 

I'm sure about that because our client uses this mode to have a "Disaster Recovery". In V11 this operation was abled provided that on first VBR server repository was set in Mantainance mode. After upgrading to V12 was not possible to use same bucket.

You can use the same bucket as the DR server will take ownership of it for restore then once the main VBR is up you point back and take control again.  I have done this.


Thanks for the feedback everyone. Would it be practical to replicate the VBR server to EC2 with the rest of my critical servers. Should I need it I simply bring it online from EC2?

You could do this as a DR plan and strategy for sure.


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