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How to retain VMs brought up using VDRO longer than 7 days?

In order for us to retain the VMs past 7 days, we decided to basically stop Veeam services on our VDRO server. Needless to say, our VDRO is inoperable at this state. We’d like to bring it up and not affect the VMs that were created.

 

So I think, this means that we need to modify entries in the VDRO database to “cleanly” remove this from VDRO but un-touch on the vSphere side. We can rename the objects in vSphere but not sure if this would work since VDRO may be using object IDs in its DB instead of object name. 

 

The VM involves is a big DB and just running a DB check took about a week and after this a patch needs to be applied necessitating another check that is why we need it longer than 7 days. 

 

Thanks for the ideas and suggestions. I have also opened a low sev ticket with support and will share what they recommend.

 

 

I always thought this was set in the Recovery Plan in VRO?  I don’t have it running right now but will try to spin it up and see unless someone else finds it before me.

@spider32 are you doing a test replica failover or test restore using data labs?

If so, you should be able to configure this 

 

Thanks for the reply.

This setting only has a max of 7 days (168 hours). Need the VMs longer than 7 days.

Thanks for the reply.

This setting only has a max of 7 days (168 hours). Need the VMs longer than 7 days.

Interesting….I hadn’t previously tested what the maximum value was….
@AlecKing any idea if this is something that can be tweaked?

Hmmm, well this maximum is probably just blocked in the UI. There’s no technical reason that we could not keep a datalab running indefinitely. However backup/replication jobs cannot run while the lab is up, do we really want to run 7+ days without a backup?

We are still able to create a backup on our primary site. We brought up the VMs (VDROLAB servers) in our DR site. The storage replication is the one not working but there is no other production VM in the volume so we are good.

Let me ask another question, if I run an Orchestration Plan using a Datalab test for 1 hour, then before the hour expires, disabled Veeam services or power down my VDRO and after the 1 hour test duration has passed bring up Veeam services or power up VDRO, what would happen to the VDROLAB VMs that were created?

 

Powering down the Orchestrator server seems drastic 😋 I am pretty sure you could just stop the agent service (VAOBackupAgent) on the relevant VBR and that will block any orchestration tasks.

As to what would happen with the VDROLAB VMs once you restarted the service…. I have never tried this! I think when the agent service is halted, the lab will also ‘halt’ in Orchestrator due to timeout. After you restart the service, you should be able to resume the lab (reconnecting to the running instance). If that works then you can power the lab off and the lab VMs should be deleted as usual.

Fun idea, I will try it in my own lab soon 🤓

I brought up the Orchestrator with most of the Veeam services except the VAOBackupAgent and VeeamBackupSvc both disabled. However, the Orchestrator still went ahead and made the objects in vSphere inaccessible. So, the Orchestrator communicates directly with vCenter and it will delete objects it created through its Orchestration Plan once the test period ends. 

I opened a ticket to Veeam Support and ask them this question. They also suggested disabling these Veeam services. In short, Veeam’s suggestion did not work or at least they could have stated definitively, the Orchestrator will delete those objects.

 

Interesting testing @spider32 . Good info to know!

Hi @spider32 -

I’m just following up on your post here. Was Veeam able to help with your max retention in VRO? If so, can you share what they did and mark as ‘Best Answer’ so others who have a similar need and come across your post may benefit?

Thank you.

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