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Recovering a protected server to the cloud

Review the recovery considerations before performing the recovery process. The process establishes the recovery of your source server from your backup repository server to your recovery server.

Recovery considerations

Carefully design and test your disaster recovery plan, especially the connection to recovered servers.

Vision Solutions recommends that you recover to the cloud instance only if you can provide the required connections between recovered servers and users, considering Amazon EC2 network options and limitations. Otherwise, it is preferable to recover to the ground machine.

If you recover to the cloud instance and secured connection needs to be established, check the following VPN connection options (verify the recommended VPN connection type with Amazon EC2 Support):

Recovery process

This section explains the process of recovering an image to the cloud and making it available for production.

  1. Click here to sign in to the AWS Management Console.
  2. Launch an instance of a Double-Take Cloud recovery target that has the same operating system as your source (both version and architecture). Click here to see a list of the currently-available Double-Take AMIs. It is important to select an appropriate AMI based upon architecture (32- or 64-bit), operating system, region, and role (in this case, the role is recovery, not repository).
Note:

In the Instance size field, select the option that is appropriate for your needs. Select the instance size that is large enough to handle the processing and storage requirements of the server you are recovering. You can use the cost estimate calculator to approximate the monthly cost for an instance.

When recovering a server image from a Cloud repository server to a Cloud recovery server, avoid the Micro instance type. Recovery and operational performance are significantly degraded if the recovery server is provisioned using the Micro instance type. For optimal data transmission and server recovery rates, use the small instance type at a minimum.
  1. Using the AWS Console, create an EBS volume for each data volume to be recovered.
Note: The EBS volumes must be in the same availability zone as the newly-launched instance.
  1. Using the AWS Console, attach the EBS volumes to the newly-launched instance.
Note: It may take several minutes before the newly-created EBS volumes are available.
  1. Obtain an elastic IP and associate it to the new instance using the AWS Management Console.
Note: The instance must be running in order to associate an elastic IP.
  1. Get the Windows Password from the More Actions menu in the AWS Management Console.
Note: You will need your private key from your key pair in order to decrypt the password.
  1. Configure a Remote Desktop Connection using the elastic IP and decrypted administrator password so that you can login and manage the Windows Server.
Note: You should login and change the Windows administrator password.
  1. Using RDC, login to the newly-launched instance and format and mount the EBS volumes using the Windows Disk Management tool.
  2. Open the Double-Take Backup Console on the repository server.
  1. Select Tools, Prepare Recovery Server.
  2. Specify the recovery server information, using the internal IP address of the server to prepare for recovery, then click Install.
Note: To determine the internal IP address, run ipconfig from a command prompt on the recovery server.
  1. When the installation completes successfully, close the dialog box.
Note:

If you are preparing a 64-bit recovery target, an error may be returned for the Install Double-Take task:

"Error installing Double-Take Backup. Please install Double-Take Backup manually and try again."

You can ignore this error as Double-Take Backup has actually been installed, and you do not need to re-install manually.

  1. On the left pane of the Double-Take Backup Console, select Recover.
Note: Do not select Recover from the toolbar. The toolbar's Recover option will not allow you to identify the correct repository server that contains the source data that you want to recover.
  1. Enter the internal IP address for the Double-Take Cloud repository.
Note: Do not use 10.8.0.1 for the IP address.
  1. Select a particular image you would like to recover, including the point-in-time to recover.
  2. To select the recovery server, enter the internal IP address of the newly-launched recovery target.
  3. (Optional) You may exclude files and folders from the recovery task.
  4. Select WAN Recovery.
Note: Do NOT select Update DNS servers.
  1. Set recovery shutdown options.
Note:
  • It is recommended that you clear the selection for Wait for user intervention before recovery, especially if you are performing a test recovery. This setting will cause the job to pause while it waits for a user response.
  • It is recommended that you clear the selection for Shut down the source server, especially if you are performing a test recovery.
  1. Allow the Double-Take Backup validation to complete.
  1. On the summary screen, change the Route under Data transmission to the internal IP address of the recovery server.
  2. Click Finish. The Double-Take Backup Console will return you to the monitoring screen while the recovery mirror completes.
Note: Because the Windows product activation is dependent on hardware, you may need to reactivate your Windows registration after recovery. Follow the on-screen prompts to complete the reactivation.

Next step: After you have completed the recovery, you might need to perform some post-recovery tasks.