VMware Cloud Director Availability can protect and migrate workloads both to and from the VMware Cloud Director™ service hosted at VMware Cloud™ on Azure VMware Solution.

Disaster Recovery and Migration with VMWare Cloud Director Availability

VMware Cloud Director Availability ™ is a Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) solution. Between providers' clouds or on-premises, with asynchronous replications, VMware Cloud Director Availability protects, migrates, fails over, and reverses failovers of vApps and virtual machines. VMware Cloud Director Availability is available through the Partner Connect Program.

VMware Cloud Director Availability introduces a unified architecture for the disaster recovery protection and migration of VMware vSphere® workloads. In both sites with VMware Cloud Director Availability, formerly known as vCloud Availability, the providers and their tenants can protect and migrate vApps and virtual machines:

  • Between an on-premises vCenter Server site and a multi-tenant provider cloud site with VMware Cloud Director™.

  • Between multi-tenant provider cloud sites with VMware Cloud Director or/and VMware Cloud Director.

All supported versions of VMware Cloud Director Availability can protect or migrate vSphere workloads with a private Cloud Director site by using the native integration with VMware Cloud Director and VMware vCenter Server®.

Azure VMware Solution Design Implications

To address the design and security implications of the Azure VMware Solution private cloud, VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 and later introduces an automation providing capabilities that usually require elevated privileges to install, configure and perform various Day 2 operations, for example, Health Check, Upgrade, Scale, Maintenance Mode, and others, by implementing a suite of PowerShell cmdlets bundled in a suite, also known as Run command for performing any administrative actions with the VMware Cloud Director Availability instance in Azure VMware Solution.

For information about using the Run commands, see Run Command in Azure VMware Solution in the Azure VMware Solution documentation.

For information about the replications use cases and their cross-site support, see Replicating workloads in the User Guide.

Disaster Recovery and Migration with VMware Cloud Director service

Both the providers and their tenants, can use the existing disaster recovery and migration flow and replicate their workloads to VMware Cloud Director service in Azure VMware Solution after following this VMware Cloud Director Availability in Azure VMware Solution Guide.

The VMware Cloud Director service pools the resources provided by the Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) in Azure VMware Solution. The following diagrams provide an overview of VMware Cloud Director service after installing VMware Cloud Director Availability and pairing an Azure VMware Solution site with an on-premises site and or with a Cloud Director site, either backed by VMware Cloud Director or Cloud Director service.

Paired On-Premises Site with VMware Cloud Director Availability in Azure VMware Solution

After pairing the On-Premises to Cloud Director Replication Appliance with VMware Cloud Director Availability in Azure VMware Solution, in the following architecture diagram the orange color shows the deployed on-premises and cloud appliances of VMware Cloud Director Availability in the VMware Cloud on Azure VMware Solution instance and the replication data traffic between the appliances, with all existing components in black:



Note:

For simplicity, on the above diagram the two Replicator Appliance instances in the VMware Cloud on Azure VMware Solution instance are depicted as a single unit.

Paired Cloud Site with VMware Cloud Director Availability in Azure VMware Solution

After pairing a Cloud Director site with VMware Cloud Director Availability in Azure VMware Solution, in the following deployment diagram the orange color shows the deployed cloud appliances of VMware Cloud Director Availability in the VMware Cloud on Azure VMware Solution instance and the replication data traffic between them, with all existing components in black:

Note:

For simplicity, on the above diagram the two Replicator Appliance instances in the VMware Cloud on Azure VMware Solution instance are depicted as a single unit.

Overview of the Configuration

VMware Cloud Director Availability resides in Azure VMware Solution private cloud SDDC.

Following access and privileges are required to deploy and configure the VMware Cloud Director Availability service:

  • To access Azure VMware Solution private cloud portal with sufficient privileges for using the Azure VMware Solution service.

  • To access the Cloud Director service with sufficient privileges for VMware Cloud Director Availability service.

  • To access the management interface of VMware Cloud Director Availability for system and maintenance tasks.

  • To access the Public Service Endpoint from external VMware Cloud Director Availability sites for pairing and migrations from these sites.

In Azure VMware Solution, the SDDC and VMware Cloud Director Availability must be prepared and configured in the following order. Procedure outline:

  1. Prepare the Azure VMware Solution SDDC associated with Cloud Director service by creating the following objects.
    1. A network segment, connecting all the cloud VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances.
    2. Outbound internet connectivity to communicate with: VMware Cloud Director service, remote VMware Cloud Director Availability sites and the upgrade repository.
    3. DNS zone with records for all the VMware Cloud Director Availability appliances.
    4. DNS zone with forwarding for the public addresses supposed to be reached by VMware Cloud Director Availability outside of the local network segment.
    5. Public IP and dNAT rule for the Public Service Endpoint of VMware Cloud Director Availability.

    6. Initialize the Azure VMware Solution site for VMware Cloud Director Availability deployment. The Run command prepares the SDDC by creating a service account in vSphere with the corresponding attributes required by VMware Cloud Director Availability.

  2. Install and configure VMware Cloud Director Availability instance in Azure VMware Solution SDDC by running the Initialize-AVSSite Run command to prepare the SDDC on Azure VMware Solution environment for VMware Cloud Director Availability installation. Once you obtain the required vSphereservice account, role and group, generate password, run the Install-VCDAAVS Run command to provision a production-ready disaster recovery and migration service. For the detailed procedure, see Install and Configure VMware Cloud Director Availability in the SDDC.

  3. Configure the Public Service Endpoint of VMware Cloud Director Availability for pairing with external VMware Cloud Director Availability sites by dNAT rule associating the external IP address with the internal VMware Cloud Director Availability endpoint running on the Tunnel Service port 8048.
  4. After performing Install-VCDAAVS for the VMware Cloud Director Availability services, to validate that the setup is complete, open the management interface then verify the status of all services by clicking the System health page, where the entries show a green health state to indicate successfully configured services.
    1. To log in to the management interface of the Cloud Director Replication Management Appliance, in a Web browser, go to either of the following addresses:
      • https://VMware-Cloud-Director-Availability-Public-Service-Endpoint_Public_Address/ui/login
      • https://Cloud-Director-Replication-Management-Appliance-IP-Address/ui/login
      • https://Cloud-Director-service-Address/provider/plugins/Your-VCDA-Plugin-Id
    2. Enter the user name and password of a user with VMware Cloud Director System privileges then click Login.
  5. Once the VMware Cloud Director Availability services are up and in a healthy state, you can use the management interface to proceed with the required management tasks. For information about performing administrative tasks such as changes to the provisioned environment and routine administration and maintenance procedures, see Administration in the Cloud Director site.
  6. Pair with external VMware Cloud Director Availability sites.
    1. Optionally, the tenants can configure and pair On-Premises to Cloud Director Replication Appliance instances with VMware Cloud Director Availability in Azure VMware Solution. For the detailed initial on-premises configuration and pairing procedure, see Configure the On-Premises to Cloud Director Replication Appliance.
    2. Optionally, pair VMware Cloud Director Availability in Azure VMware Solution with private Cloud Director sites. For the detailed pairing procedure, see Pair two Cloud Director sites.

After completing all these steps, by using the existing disaster recovery and migration flow in VMware Cloud Director Availability the trusted, allowed, and paired providers and their trusted, allowed, and paired tenants can migrate workloads to and from VMware Cloud Director service in Azure VMware Solution.

  • Get familiar with the VMware Cloud Director Availability Run command glossary intended to support you in the process of managing and maintaining the VMware Cloud Director Availability instance.
  • Later, to allow access to perform administrative tasks like certificate replacement by using the three types of management interfaces of VMware Cloud Director Availability:
    • Add three inventory services for each management interface type: Replicator Service, Manager Service, and Tunnel Service
    • Add three NAT rules, with additional NAT rule for each Replicator Service instance.
    • Modify the existing compute gateway firewall rule that allows access from the trusted compute sources group and include the three additional services, for a total of four inventory services.