Lucidity works seamlessly with Veeam, a backup solution used by our customers on Azure Virtual Machines. Lucidity guarantees that the customer's existing backup and restore process will remain unchanged.
Veeam provides a complete backup and recovery solution for virtualized platforms, with support for cloud and on premises deployments. You can use the Veeam software to back up and recover Azure VMs that are part of an Azure application.
Veeam connects with the Azure tenants with a Service Principal and an IAM role which allows it to perform the necessary backup and restore operations. Veeam provides a UI console to configure and manage backup policies easily, as well as for observability
In this demo, we have used Free trial version of Veeam from the Azure marketplace:
https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/veeam.azure_backup_free
We have already deployed the Veeam instance in our sandbox environment. Once the VM is up and running, enter its public IP in your browser and provide the VM login details to access the Veeam console.
Create A Test VM:
1. A new virtual machine is created for this demo of backup and restore : aadhil-test3
2. This demo VM is onboarded to Lucidity. The mount point selected is F: drive.
3. The lucidity managed disks in this VM can also be seen on the Azure portal:
4. There are already some files present in the F drive. We will take a backup of this current setup using Veeam.
CREATE A BACKUP POLICY:
5. Now, lets create a backup policy in the Veeam console
Go to Policies ➜ Add policy as shown below. Fill in all the sections as necessary to complete the wizard. Select our test instance (aadhil-test3) to backup, and finish creating the policy.
6. Once the backup policy is created, select the policy and click on Start. The backup will be initiated for the test VM.
In order to view the status, go to the Session log as shown below:
7. Since the backup is now completed, let's add some more data onto the F drive:
Now that the backup is complete, when we try to restore, Veeam restores it to the previous version without any of the newly added (highlighted above) files.
Veeam provides two options for restoration - Full VM restore and Disk level Restore. Let's perform both cases in this demo.
Case 1 - Full VM Restore:
Go to Protected Data ➜ Click below the Restore Points. All the previous backup snapshots will be visible along with the timeline.
Select the latest backup which was done earlier and click on Restore ➜ VM Restore.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: "Available Restore Points" screenshot showing the Restore dropdown menu with options "VM Restore", "Disk Restore", and "File-Level Recovery" and a table of snapshot entries with dates, destination, VM size, retention, and data retrieval columns.]
Complete all the steps in the Restore wizard. You have the option to restore it to its original location or to a new location, with different settings as seen below. In this demo, we will select the original location.
[IMAGE PLACEHOLDER: "Restore Virtual Machines" wizard screenshot showing the Restore mode panel with radio options "Restore to the original location" and "Restore to a new location, or with different settings", and left-side navigation items like Virtual Machines, Account, Restore Mode, Reason, Summary.]
11. Once the above step is completed, Veeam validates your configuration, and provides you with a dialog box for a final confirmation. Click on Continue and finish the restoration wizard.
12. The restoration job gets triggered, and the details can be seen from the Session log, or from the Overview page:
13. Once restored, Login to the test VM and check for the files inside the F drive.
From the above image, we can infer that Veeam has restored this VM to its previous state successfully.
CASE II - DISKS LEVEL RESTORE:
To perform the disk level restore test-case, let us add some new files into the F drive once again as earlier. Once it's done, follow the below steps.
14. On the Veeam console, go to Protected Data ➜ click under Restore Points and select Disk Restore option, as seen below:
15. Complete the restore wizard, and select the same location for this demo. You also have the option to select a different tenant, and restore it with different settings. Once the details are provided, click Continue on the dialog box as shown below:
16. The restoration job is triggered, and the details can be seen from the Session log:
Disk Restore
Session status
Status | Start Time | End Time | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
Running | 05/08/2024 6:48 AM | — | 32 seconds |
Session log
Time | Status | Message | Execution Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
05/08/2024 6:48 AM | Success | Starting restore job (session ID: da6e9068-a4ca-4f70-...) | — |
05/08/2024 6:48 AM | Success | Validating restore configuration | 6 seconds |
05/08/2024 6:48 AM | Running | Restoring disk aadhil-test3_DataDisk_0 (128.0 GB) from ... | 25 seconds |
05/08/2024 6:48 AM | Running | Restoring disk ad2a31b8e4254fceae1cec3141a27684-... | 25 seconds |
05/08/2024 6:48 AM | Running | Restoring disk a0f2da9eb2394073afd08bb43d469196-... | 25 seconds |
05/08/2024 6:48 AM | Running | Restoring disk aadhil-test3_OsDisk_1_38722901f4c84... | 25 seconds |
05/08/2024 6:48 AM | Running | Restoring disk 5b860953dd1f4a4396b82d2a952c71ef... | 25 seconds |
17. Once the disks are restored, Login to the test VM and check for the files again. As shown in the below image, the F drive is back to its original state.
CONCLUSION
As Lucidity solution works out of the box with Veeam backup and recovery software, the restored Virtual machine is onboarded and available on the Lucidity Dashboard automatically without any manual effort from the customer.
Restored mount point F: drive is automatically managed by Lucidity as earlier.
More Details
/subscriptions/96b19cfa-916f-4948-be0e-6951fb1bf368/resourcegroups/adityag-demo-rg/providers/microsoft.compute/virtualmachines/aadhil-test3
Instance
Mount Point
Operational Timeline
Mount point | Usage | Status | Onboarded by | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
F | 0GB | ON BOARDED | aadhila@lucidity.cloud | â‹® |
