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- How to Perform a Manual Failback (Reverse Replication)
How to Perform a Manual Failback (Reverse Replication)
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Challenge
This article explains the steps to perform a manual failback using reverse replication when a normal failback fails or is not possible because the replica was powered on outside of the Veeam console.
This process turns replication on its head and uses it as a tool to synchronize the replica's state back onto a production VM.
Note:
This process turns replication on its head and uses it as a tool to synchronize the replica's state back onto a production VM.
Note:
If the replica was reverted to a specific restore point (snapshot) and then manually powered on, reverse replication can still be used. However, all restore points will be consolidated when returning the replica to be used for regular replication.
Solution
Important Note
The following steps will document how to manually failback a replica when the normal failback operation fails or if the replica was manually powered on. These steps will replicate the current state of the replica onto an existing production VM. If there is no production VM to “failback” on to, you can skip the mapping steps (Part 1:Steps 2 & 6), and Veeam will create a VM in the destination specified within the manual failback replication job.
Part 1: Create the New Replication Job
- Create a new replication job.
- Check the "Replica seeding (for low bandwidth DR sites)" box on the first page:
Note: This step can be skipped if you are not failing back to a production VM.
- Add the replica to the job as the source VM in the Virtual Machines tab.
- On the Destination tab, select the exact location of the production VM being "failed back" onto. All fields must match the production VM.
Note: If no production VM exists to failback to, specify where you want the replica's state to be duplicated.
- On the Job Settings tab, choose a repository for the metadata closest to the VM that was added on the Virtual Machines tab.
- On the Seeding tab, select the "Map replicas to existing VMs" checkbox.
- Highlight the replica, click edit, and then select the production VM to be "failed back" onto.
- On the Guest Processing tab, enable "Application-aware processing" (only if needed)
- Skip the Schedule tab, and click Finish to create the job.
Part 2: Manual Failback Procedure
The following steps are intended to be performed while the replica is powered on, until the step that instructs you to power it off. If the replica is already powered off, you can skip to step 3.
- Run the replication job once.
This step may take a very long time.
- Cleanly shutdown the replica that is being used as the source.
- Run the replication job again.
This is done so that the failback target and the replica are in the exact same state; since the replica is powered off, it will not change.
- Within the Veeam Backup & Replication console navigate to Backup & Replication>Replicas>Ready
- Find the entry whose job name matches the job created in Part 1 of this KB.
- Right-Click and Select Failover Now… and Next, Next, Finish
- The production VM will now power on. Please verify its functionality, then continue.
- Right-click the same entry as Step 6 (Now under Replicas>Active) and select Permanent Failover.
The permanent failover will consolidate all snapshots on the replica-of-the-replica-now-production virtual machine.
Part 3: Return to Normal Operation and Cleanup
Return to Normal Operation
- If you mapped the reverse replication job to the original production machine, that production machine's Ref-ID likely did not change. As such, you should find that the original backup and replication jobs that interacted with the original production machine require no modification and operate without issue.
- If you allowed the reverse replication job to create a new VM or you mapped to a VM other than the original production machine, The VM that is now in production will have a different Ref-ID than the original production VM. As such, you must re-add that new production VM to the normal replication job and any previous backup jobs it was part of. Within the normal replication job, enable the seeding option, then use the mapping feature under the seeding tab to map the new production server to the existing replica.
Reverse Replication Cleanup
- Delete the manual failback replication job created in Part 1.
- If this reverse replication process was performed because the replica was initially powered on manually (not via Veeam native failover function), run the replication job that created that replica to force Veeam to return it to a "Ready" state.
- If this reverse replication process was performed because the Veeam native failback function failed, you will need to undo the failover before running the replication job.
More Information
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