Automating VM Disaster Recovery Using AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (DRS)

In today's cloud-driven world, ensuring business continuity during unexpected disruptions is a top priority. AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS) provides a powerful, automated solution for disaster recovery (DR), enabling businesses to quickly recover their virtual machines (VMs) in AWS. This blog explores the capabilities of AWS DRS and demonstrates how to leverage it for VM disaster recovery.

What is AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery (AWS DRS)?

AWS DRS simplifies and automates the disaster recovery process for physical, virtual, and cloud servers into AWS. It continuously replicates your on-premises or cloud workloads to AWS, ensuring data consistency and enabling near real-time recovery.

Key Features:

• Continuous Block-Level Replication: Ensures minimal Recovery Point Objective (RPO).
• Scalable Recovery: Handles scaling of resources automatically.
• Automated Failover and Failback: Speeds up recovery time with reduced manual intervention.
• Test Recovery Drills: Conduct non-disruptive tests to ensure DR readiness.

Why AWS DRS for VM Disaster Recovery?

Using AWS DRS for VMs offers multiple benefits:

1. Reduced Downtime: Near-instantaneous recovery reduces disruption to operations.
2. Cost-Effective: Pay only for the storage and compute used during replication and recovery.
3. Automated Orchestration: Automates recovery tasks like boot order and application dependencies.
4. Multi-Cloud and On-Premises Support: Ideal for hybrid environments.

Example: Configuring AWS DRS for VM Disaster Recovery

Let’s walk through the process of setting up AWS DRS for disaster recovery of an on-premises virtual machine (VM).

Scenario

You manage a critical on-premises application running on a VMware ESXi-based VM. To ensure business continuity, you want to automate its disaster recovery into AWS.

Steps to Set Up AWS DRS:

Step 1: Prerequisites

1. Install the AWS Replication Agent

   • Download the agent from the AWS Management Console.
   • Install it on your source VM.

2. Set Up IAM Permissions

   • Create an IAM role with permissions for AWS DRS, including replication, recovery, and resource creation.

3. Enable Required AWS Services

   • Ensure you have an Amazon VPC, subnets, and security groups configured.
   • Enable S3 for replication data storage and EBS for recovery volumes.

Step 2: Configure Source Environment

1. Install and Register the AWS Replication Agent:

   sudo yum install aws-replication-agent.rpm
   aws-replication-agent configure --region <region>

1. This agent will perform continuous replication of the VM's block data to AWS. Verify Network Connectivity: Ensure your VM can connect to AWS endpoints for replication

Step 3: Set Up AWS DRS in the Console

1. Navigate to Elastic Disaster Recovery in the AWS Management Console.
2. Add the source server by providing its details, including hostname and network configuration.
3. Configure replication settings:
   • Replication Server Instance Type: Select a cost-efficient instance size.
   • EBS Volumes: Choose the volume type and size for the replica.

Step 4: Perform Non-Disruptive Recovery Drill

1. Use the Launch Recovery Instances feature to simulate a failover.
2. Test the VM in a recovery state without impacting the source environment.
3. Validate application functionality and network configurations.

Step 5: Automate Recovery Workflow

1. Use AWS Systems Manager or Lambda for custom orchestration:
   • Set up boot order for dependent VMs.
   • Automate DNS updates to route traffic to AWS after failover.
2. Monitor recovery using CloudWatch metrics (e.g., ReplicationLag).

Step 6: Enable Failback (Post-Disaster)

Once the on-premises environment is restored, initiate a failback process:

1. Use AWS DRS to reverse the replication direction.
2. Restore the VM to its original state.

Cost Considerations

Replication Costs: Pay for the S3 storage used by replication data.
Recovery Costs: Pay for EC2, EBS, and networking during failover testing or actual recovery.
Optimization Tips:

1. Use EBS snapshots to reduce ongoing costs.
2. Optimize instance sizes for test drills.

Conclusion

AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery provides a robust and automated solution for protecting critical workloads, ensuring minimal downtime and data loss. By leveraging AWS DRS, you can confidently automate the disaster recovery process for your VMs, achieving operational resilience without breaking the bank.

If you're considering AWS DRS, take the first step today by evaluating your DR strategy and trying out a recovery drill. AWS’s simplicity and scalability make it the perfect partner for business continuity.

Would you like more details on integrating DNS failover or cost optimization for AWS DRS? Let me know!