EBC Cloud Connect

EBC Migration and Cloud Backup services are available to onboard to your EBC 3.0 Shared / ST or Core platform in a self-service manner. Backup is also available to enable off-site backups in an approachable way without requiring large investments in hardware or software.

The services use Veeam Cloud Connect and are suitable for use with Veeam Backup & Replication / Availability Suite to back up your VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V VMs, appropriate applications, and physical server.

EBC Migration

You can migrate VMs to your EBC environment through EBC Migration. The on-premises Veeam environment that is connected to the live VMware vSphere environment is provided with Equinix Managed Services' Cloud Connect service. From there, a replication job is defined towards the EBC environment. Once the VMs are replicated, the VM on the EBC can be started (the failover functionality is thus used). The data of the EBC environment is provided in a separate delivery.

Before proceeding with the setup, it is advisable to create a vApp structure with matching networks (in the case of EBC Shared / ST) before transporting VMs to the EBC. A vApp can be seen as a collection of VMs in an application landscape, there is a maximum of 100 VMs in a vApp.

Add a Service Provider to Veeam

1. Go to Backup Infrastructure in Veeam Backup & Replication Console, select Service Providers, and choose Add Service Provider.

   

   Enter the address of Equinix Managed Services' Cloud Connect environment, and click Next.

   At the time of writing, the service is unlocked through Amsterdam and the address is, cc-am3.equinix-managed-services.nl.

2. From EBC delivery, the default is to use a so-called Identity Provider (IdP). By default, Equinix provides a KeyCloak instance for this purpose. Depending on your requirements, this can also be a proprietary IdP, such as ADFS or Azure AD.

   Authentication with an IdP based account is not supported and will require the use of a virtual Cloud Directory (VCD) local account that has been assigned the role Organization Administrator.

3. In the wizard, specify the account which is outside the IdP, adding the name of your EBC Organization.

   

   For example, if the organization in the EBC environment is called 123_VOORBEELD, and the local account is called cloudconnect, then the username should be cloudconnect@123_VOORBEELD.

4. Click Apply to establish the connection to the environment, and display the available resources of the EBC environment.

   

Replication

To get the VM workload in the EBC, a Replication Job has to be made in the in Veeam Backup and Replication.

1. In the Veeam Backup & Replication Console, go to Home, and select Virtual Machine under Replication Job.

   

2. Give a Name to the Replication Job.

   

   If any networks already have been made in the EBC environment, select Network remapping. The applied network IDs of the on-premises locations are not exactly the same as those available in the EBC Environment.

   If Network Remapping is not selected, the network cards will be linked to a null network. This means that the VM won't be attached to a network in the EBC environment, and will disable communications after a failover.

Note: EBC Migration does not provide network connectivity between your on-premises location and the EBC. This type of connectivity must be purchased separately.

The VM can be linked to the correct target network in the EBC environment later, via the Cloud Director portal. If Network remapping is not selected at the beginning, the replicated VM will not be linked to a network and no network card will have been created. Should Network remapping not have been initially configured, the Job will give a warning about it.



3. Follow the wizard to specify the machines to be migrated.

   Under Destination, specify the Cloud host, and select the Organization VDC on where the VMs should go.

   

4. For the target environment, the Wizard displays where the VMs will be within the EBC environment. If vApps already exist in EBC, one of them can be selected as the target where the VMs to be replicated for this Job will be. Also choose the desired Storage policy/tier where the VMs should land in this Job.

   

5. In the Network section, the source networks relevant for this set of VMs can be linked to the already created target networks within the EBC environment.

   

6. It is recommended to keep the number of Restore Points low and the Replica name suffix empty. The number of Restore points to keep, are the number of snapshots that remain open. The more snapshots, the longer this will take to consolidate, 1 is the minimum, and 2 is recommended.

   

7. Follow the rest of the Wizard to complete the process.

Note: Application Aware Processing is not always necessary.

8. Start the Replication Job yourself, or wait for the schedule to start.

   If required, you can start the Job several times to transfer the differences (delta).

Cutover

Once the VMs are fully replicated to the EBC, a Cutover must take place. This means that the VMs become active in the EBC. It can be performed in two ways:

1. Replication without Failover plan – If the VM was already off before the Replication job was started for the last time and completed successfully, then the full state of the VM has passed. From Cloud Directory, the VM can be started. This may be done outside of Veeam.

2. Replication with Failover plan – Veeam offers the possibility to create a Failover Plan for the Enterprise and Enterprise Plus variants. Applying a Failover plan is useful when applying a VM startup sequence, and/or startup delay is important.

Make a Failover Plan

1. In the Veeam Backup & Replication Console, go to Home, select Failover Plan, and choose Cloud Connect (vCloud).

   

2. Name the Failover Plan, and add the VM(s) to it that are to be migrated to the EBC.

   

   Here you can specify a sequence as well as a delay between starting between the different machines. For example, consider an application landscape where a database server must be started before the other servers.

   Note: A Single VM can be included in the Failover plan.

Start a Failover Plan

Once the Failover plan is created, it can be started or tested. Testing is recommended from the Cloud Directory interface (don't forget to turn it off after the test). Veeam offers a Test Function, although using this is not recommended in the onboarding scenario on account of possible hurdles .

To start a Failover plan, the VMs are turned on based on the previously set order and delay in your new EBC environment. This is done manually and in doing so, no final synchronization is done. It is recommended to turn off the VMs in the Failover Plan at the source location and run the Replication Job again.

1. In Veeam Backup & Replication Console, go to Home, and choose Failover Plansin Replicas.

   Previously created Failover Plans are displayed.

2. Right click Choose Failover Plan, and select Start.

   

   A window opens where the status is displayed.

   

   In Replicas, the processed VMs have an active status.

   

From this phase, VMs can either permanently fail over, or a Failback/Rollback can be done where changes are migrated back to the on-premises location.

Permanent failover

To proceed with failover, a confirmation is requested.

In case of a permanent failover, the VM disappears from the Veeam inventory in Replicas on the client's side, and they are excluded from replica jobs.

On the provider's side, Equinix Managed Services' Cloud Connect environment, it is also no longer known as a replica.

Failback / Rollback

If a VM is set to run in the EBC but the action has to be undone, there is a possibility to perform a failback. This is possible untilPermanent failover is performed on the affected VM(s). Changes made on the outbound VM at our end can be replicated back to the user's on-premises environment.

In the destination window, different scenarios can be chosen to replicate changes made on the VM(s) that have already run on the EBC, back to the EBC environment.

EBC Cloud Backup

EBC Cloud Backup offers reliable backup of server workload at another location without implementing own infrastructure there. Backup as a Service using Veeam Cloud Connect is platform agnostic. Workloads on VMware vSphere / Cloud Directory, Microsoft Hyper-V, Nutanix Acropolis, and baremetals i.c.w. Veeam agents, can be stored to the Backup as a Service platform.

Add a Service Provider to VEEAM

1. In the on-premises Veeam Backup & Replication Console, go to Backup Infrastructure, select Service Providers, and select Add Service Provider.

   

2. Enter the address of Equinix Managed Services' Cloud Connect environment, and click Next.

   Note: At the time of writing, the service will be unlocked through Amsterdam and the address will be cc-am3.equinix-managed-services.nl.

3. From EBC Cloud Backup delivery, a username and password will be sent to you.

   Click Add to enter these in Credentials, and click Apply.

   

   The amount of consumed capacity of the cloud backup storage (repository) is displayed on the screen.

   

Backup To Cloud Repository

Once the repository is created in Veeam, the Cloud Repository can be specified for a backup job, and a Veeam Copy job.

Tip: Based on the 3-2-1 backup storage concept, we recommended to store the primary backup onsite, and to save a copy of the onsite backups at an offsite location using a Copy job.

After a backup job has successfully run it will be displayed in the GUI. From there, the regular restore options that are done with an on-premises backup can be executed.

Dependencies

EBC Migration and Backup have the following dependencies:

• Your on-premises Veeam environment must be equipped with at least Veeam Backup & Replication, or Availability Suite v9.5 update 3 or higher. You should not be more than 2 versions behind the latest major version.

• Your on-premises Veeam licenses must be at least Standard or higher. The Community Edition is not supported.

• Your on-premises Veeam environment must have internet connectivity to the Cloud Connect environment managed by Equinix.

• Your on-premises external internet IP address must be known to Equinix to use the service.

• Network connectivity between your on-premises environment and the EBC must be set up separately from EBC Migration. The solution itself does not provide this.

Sources

See details on the functionalities of Veeam and Veeam Cloud Connect.