Deployment Checklist:
- Connect to the Veeam Recovery Orchestrator UI, shortcut on the desktop or (Veeam Orchestrator UI: https://localhost:9898).
- By default, you will login to the home view of Veeam Recovery Orchestrator. (URL will show /#Home)
Home vs. Administration View:
- The Home view shows a high-level dashboard, Inventory group, Orchestration Plans, DataLabs, Lab Calendars, and Reports. Orchestration Plans are configured here, but majority of the configuration is done in the Administration view.
- The Administration view is where all the backend and initial integration is done before we create Orchestration Plans. This is the Gear icon in the upper right corner if you are currently looking at the home view. (URL will show /#Config)
Managing Inventory:
You can view the currently connect groups by clicking Inventory in the Home view.
To create orchestration plans, you will use one or more inventory groups. Inventory groups are sets of virtual or physical machines that are managed by the embedded Veeam ONE server installed on the Orchestrator server.
Most inventory groups are created automatically, based on discovered items such as Veeam Backup & Replication jobs and protection groups, vSphere datastores, or vSphere VM tags.
Types of Inventory Groups: VM Groups
Inventory groups are the building blocks of orchestration plans and are created and populated using the embedded Veeam ONE server and its Business View engine.
Orchestrator automatically creates a group for each of the following:
- Veeam backup job protecting vSphere VMs or Veeam agents (Windows or Linux).
- Veeam replica or CDP replica job protecting vSphere VMs.
- vSphere datastore containing VMs.
- vSphere datastore containing VMs and backed by a replicating storage system.
- Veeam agent protection group.
- vCenter Server tag for VMs (the group will be named Category – Tag).
The Importance of VMware Tags:
- Like Veeam Backup & Replication, you can utilize VMware Tags to group Virtual Machines.
- VMware Tags are the recommended approach for grouping like Virtual Machines to create VM Groups. VM Groups are selected during the creation of each Orchestration Plan to scope your workload recovery.
- VMware Tags are also used for Recovery Locations to scope Compute and Storage.
- You will select source and destination vSphere Datacenter, Clusters, or specific ESXi hosts for compute resources.
- You will select source and destination vSphere Datacenter, Clusters, or specific Datastores for storage resources.
Deployment Step: At this time, you may want to consider creating and assigning your VMware Tags that you will use for your Recovery Locations. Without these tags you will be unable to create those Recovery locations.
To force Veeam Recovery Orchestrator with vCenter to get the latest inventory changes you will need to login to the Veeam ONE Web Client: https://locahost:1239.
Configuration (Gear) -> Data Collection -> Start Button.
For the below configurations we will switch to the Administration view:
Connecting Veeam Backup & Replication Servers:
- To be able to orchestrate a remote Veeam Backup & Replication server, you must deploy an Orchestrator agent on the server. The Orchestrator agent will trigger orchestration commands on that server.
Connecting Infrastructure:
- If required, you can configure connections to vCenter Servers, and NetApp or HPE storage systems.
- If you have already connected servers in the Initial Configuration wizard, you do not need to connect them again.
Configuring Notification Settings:
- The Orchestrator UI allows you to specify email notification settings for automated delivery of Orchestrator reports and documents.
Configuring Recovery Locations:
- Recovery locations consist of resource groups (that is, infrastructure objects such as vSphere hosts) used as target locations when orchestrating recovery. Resource groups are managed by the embedded Veeam ONE server installed on the Orchestrator server.
- Recovery locations are discussed in more depth in Understanding Orchestration Plans.
Configuring Plan Steps:
- Plan steps are the sequence of actions taken by the Orchestrator server during plan execution. For each machine in an inventory group included in an orchestration plan, two types of steps can be performed:
- Default steps provided by Veeam
- Custom steps added by end user
- Plan Steps are discussed in more depth in Understanding Orchestration Plans.
Configuring Credentials:
- Orchestrator Administrators can choose which credentials will be visible to Plan Authors and available for use in orchestration plans. These credentials can be used in plans, for example, to run verification scripts inside the guest OS, or in other checks.
Editing Template Jobs:
- When you create a replica or restore plan, you have the option to re-protect machines included in the plan as soon as the recovery process is completed. Orchestrator will automatically create a new replication or backup job to re-protect the recovered VMs as part of the plan execution process.
- To accomplish this, configure a template job on the Veeam Backup & Replication server that protects the required machines and is connected to your Orchestrator server. For Orchestrator to discover the job as a template, you must create a standard Veeam job and include the text [VRO Template] in the job description.
Connecting DataLabs:
- We will cover DataLabs in the next section as this requires a virtual lab to be configured in Veeam Backup & Replication.
Review the detailed configuration guidance in the User Guide.
Ensure Notifications are enabled: ensure SMTP configuration is working, and any additional stakeholders are added and subscribed to reports.
Test live Orchestration with test workloads: schedule and/or Execute Planned Failover and Failback from DR as needed. This should be done with a test workload and test orchestration plan to ensure no Production outage takes place.
Subscribe to Reports: Add email addresses that will receive report notifications for your Orchestrator server. Continue reading in the User Guide.
If you need more help getting started, you can post your question in the comments section below or contact us at any time and someone from the Customer Success team will be there to assist you.