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- Installing and configuring the Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit (EMET) - Wed, Mar 16 2016
At this point, we’re almost ready to start replicating VMs into Azure. Before we get to that step, let’s take one last look at our VM properties and make sure that everything looks good and is in a supported configuration.
Checking VM properties in Virtual Machine Manager
As you can see in my screenshot above, the VM is in a VMM cloud, it is a supported OS (Windows Server 2012 R2), and it is a Generation 1 VM. The only issue I had initially is that the VM name contained spaces, which isn’t supported in Azure. Fortunately, a quick rename will solve that issue.
Enable virtual machine protection
In the Azure Management Portal, click Recovery Services and then click the Azure Site Recovery vault name. At this point, you may end up in the Quick Start or the Dashboard. Either way, click Protected Items and then click the name of the protected cloud.
Specifying protected items
You should receive a message indicating that no virtual machines in the cloud are enabled for protection. Let’s fix that! Click Enable Protection. Next, we’ll select our demo VM and then click the checkmark.
Enabling virtual machine protection
Once you click the checkmark to confirm your selections, Azure will work for a few minutes to set up the replication.
Enabling protection of virtual machines in Azure Site Recovery
You can check the status by clicking the Jobs tab and looking for two jobs: Enable protection and Finalize protection on virtual machine. Once both jobs have completed, your VM is replicated into Azure.
Azure Site Recovery job status
Map networks
In the Azure Management Portal, click Recovery Services and then click the Azure Site Recovery vault name. Go to the Quick Start and click Map networks.
Mapping networks
Select your VMM server as the source location and Microsoft Azure as the target location. Select your source network (in our case, US East Datacenter) and then click the Map button at the bottom of the screen.
Mapping source VMM network to target Azure network
Select an Azure network in the Target Azure Network pull-down and then click the checkmark.
Selecting a target network in Azure
After the process completes, you should be able to see that the networks have been mapped.
Azure Site Recovery source and target networks mapped
We can verify this mapping on our protected VM by going to Recovery Services, clicking the name of the Azure Site Recovery vault, and then clicking Protected Items, Protected Cloud name, and the VM name. This also gives us a chance to check the VM size in the event you want to make a change.
Azure Site Recovery protected VM properties
Create a recovery plan
Next, we need to create a recovery plan to failover the VMs into Azure. Click Recovery Plans and then click Create Recovery Plan.
Creating a recovery plan
Name the recovery plan and ensure that your Virtual Machine Manager server is listed as the source and Microsoft Azure is listed as the target.
Specifying plan name and target
Select your VM and click the checkmark.
Selecting a virtual machine
Once the recovery plan is created, we can run a test failover by clicking—what else—Test Failover.
Azure Site Recovery test failover
Next, we’ll need to select one of our Azure Virtual Networks and specify the encryption key (if you enabled encryption) that we created back in Part 2 of this series, DataEncryptionCertificate.pfx. Once those are filled in, click the checkbox to confirm your selections.
Confirming test failover virtual network and encryption key
After the test failover runs for a few minutes, you’ll have the opportunity to check for errors and see if the VM came up correctly.
Waiting for action during test failover
You should be able to head to Virtual Machines in the Azure Management Portal and see the test copy of the VM. If you’ve extended your on-premises network to your Azure network, you can try to Remote Desktop into the VM. If your network isn’t configured this way, you’ll need to add an endpoint to access RDP over the Internet. You can do this by going to Endpoints and clicking Add. Then, choose Add a Stand-Alone Endpoint and click Next. Then, choose Remote Desktop and supply a public port to use.
Creating a Remote Desktop endpoint
Once you’ve tested the VM, that’s it. You’ll need to go back into the test failover job and choose the Complete Test option to finish the test. Also make sure that you check the The test failover is complete. Clean up the test environment. option so that your subscription is cleaned up from the test.
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