Azure Site Recovery Overview


Applies to: Nerdio for Azure (NFA) Professional and Enterprise users only.

Refer this KB article to determine if you are a NFA user.


Why does ASR exist?

  • Azure Site Recovery (ASR) is Microsoft’s Disaster Recovery as a Solution (DRAAS) built specifically for Azure workloads. ASR enables companies to recover from catastrophes quickly with minimal downtime. ASR can also be used as a tool to migrate existing workloads into Microsoft Azure, either from an on-premise environment or migrate workloads between regions and resource groups.

Who is ASR designed for?

  • Companies that need to meet specific requirements or regulations for their industry such as ISO 27001.
  • Companies who are sensitive to downtime or want to limit impact from region specific Azure outages.
  • Companies who wish to migrate current workloads into Azure from an on-premise environment, between regions, or between resource groups.
  • Anyone seeking a complete business continuity and disaster recovery (BCDR) strategy for their business.

When can ASR be used?

  • Replication of Azure VMs from one Azure region to another
  • Replication of on-premise VMWare VMs, Hyper-V VMs, physical Windows and Linux servers, and Azure Stack VMs to Azure
  • Replication of on-premises VMWare VMs, Hyper-V VMs managed by System Center VMM, and physical servers to a secondary site.
  • Replication of specific workloads running on a machine that’s supported for replication.

What are some of the key features of ASR?

  • A simple BCDR solution – ASR is built into azure and can be managed entirely from within a single location.
  • Data Resilience - Data is replicated inside of Azure storage with all the resilience and security provided by Azure.
  • RTO and RPO Targets – Manage and meet organizational RTO/RPO targets with continuous replication at intervals as low as 30 seconds for Hyper-V servers.
  • Easy and Flexible Failover– Test failover and disaster recovery scenarios without disrupting replication. Failovers can also be planned for expected outages with zero-data loss. Unplanned failovers can happen with minimal data loss and fail back to your primary site can be done easily when it’s available again.

How do I setup a basic ASR replication?

  • Log in to your Azure tenant
  • Enable replication for an Azure VM
    • In the Azure portal, click Virtual machines, and select the VM you want to replicate.
    • In Operations, click Disaster recovery.
    • In Configure disaster recovery > Target region select the target region to which you'll replicate.
    • For this QuickStart, accept the other default settings.
    • Click Enable replication. This starts a job to enable replication for the VM.
  • Verify your settings
    • After the replication job has finished, you can check the replication status, modify replication settings, and test the deployment.
      • In the VM menu, click Disaster recovery.
      • You can verify replication health, the recovery points that have been created, and source, target regions on the map.
    • Clean up resources/stop replication
      • The VM in the primary region stops replicating when you disable replication for it:
        • The source replication settings are cleaned up automatically. The Site Recovery extension installed on the VM as part of the replication isn't removed and must be removed manually.
        • Site Recovery billing for the VM stops.
      • Stop replication as follows
        • Select the VM.
        • In Disaster recovery, click Disable Replication.

Where can I get more information?

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