Abiquo DRaaS

Abiquo with Zerto Disaster Recovery lets you configure DRaaS in your multi-cloud platform so users can easily protect their VMs in private cloud datacenters with VMware vCenter.

Introduction to DRaaS

The Abiquo DRaaS feature uses Zerto to let you offer self-service disaster recovery as a service and on demand.
This will let users supplement their snapshots and on-demand backups, as part of a fully protected multi-cloud platform.
When users protect VMs, Abiquo creates virtual protection groups (per virtual appliance) and manages VM protection. 

You can configure DRaaS for private cloud environments with Zerto and VMware vCenter. 
Abiquo supports a Zerto environment where you can protect a datacenter and fail over to a recovery datacenter. See Abiquo and Zerto test environment This document is not updated for Zerto 9.7 U2. 

To work with Zerto failover in Abiquo, configure the Zerto plugin in the Abiquo platform using Abiquo configuration properties - search for zerto in the properties. 

Then to register your Zerto system in Abiquo, create Protection managers .

To control access to this feature, there are two new privileges, and by default only the cloud administrator role has these privileges.

Dashboards

The Abiquo dashboard can display the number of VMs the tenant has protected with disaster recovery.

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Dashboard with DR protection usage and limits

Administrators can set limits for the usage of the DRaaS feature. They can set limits at the tenant, tenant in datacenter, and VDC levels on the number of VMs that users can protect with disaster recovery as a service. See Manage enterprises in the section on set allocation limits.

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Enterprise allocation limits can limit the number of DR protected VMs

And of course, you can set prices for VM disaster recovery protection with DRaaS. See Pricing view

The platform will include the new DR protected VM attribute in your accounting data and in the pricing estimates for deploying VMs.

DRaaS in infrastructure

To start working with the DRaaS feature, in the Infrastructure view, you can define a Protection manager. For each protection manager, you will also need a recovery protection manager.

It is easy to configure Abiquo to use a standard DRaaS configuration of Zerto Protection Managers for vCenter. See Protection managers

When a VM fails over, Zerto should replicate it from the production vCenter to the recovery vCenter in the recovery datacenter.

Each protection manager works with a single vCenter and each Abiquo virtual datacenter works with a single vCenter. This means that administrators do not need to link protection managers with virtual datacenters in Abiquo. Each protection manager can cover the group of Abiquo virtual datacenters with VMs in the same vCenter. For configuration reasons, the administrator should assign Available datacenters. The platform will use the NARS remote service from an available datacenter to manage Zerto.

You can later edit the protection manager if you need to make changes.

After you configure DRaaS, when you onboard a VM that is protected by Zerto, the platform will detect that it is DR protected. 

Tenant networks

In the recovery vCenter, the administrator should create a network for each tenant to use for recovery and failover testing. When the user protects a VM, the platform will search for the tenant's recovery network by name to add it to the Zerto virtual protection group.

To define the recovery networks for multiple tenants, the administrator should create a base name and register it in the abiquo.properties file. Then, for each tenant the administrator should define a DR-code. 

For example, the default network base name is Draasnet.

And if you had three enterprises called Enterprise1, Enterprise2, Enterprise 3, you could use the DR-codes of Ent1, Ent2, and Ent3.

The network administrator should create networks with the same base name plus the DR-code tenant suffix for each tenant. 

So in our example, we would create three networks called: DraasnetEnt1, DraasnetEnt2, and DraasnetEnt3.

The administrator should then edit each Abiquo enterprise and add an enterprise property with the key DR-code and the value of the tenant's network suffix.

In this case, for Enterprise1 it would be Ent1, and so on for the other enterprises. 

See Manage enterprise credentials and properties

In order to onboard recovered VMs, you can define the recovery networks in the recovery datacenter in Abiquo. To capture a VM, you will need to know the network tag of the network that it is in. The easiest networking option is to create an external network as the recovery network for each enterprise. When you create the external network in the platform, enter the same network tag that you assigned in the infrastructure.

See Manage external networks.

If you want to use private networks, it may be possible to define a recovery virtual datacenter for each virtual datacenter and deploy a VM on a custom private network with an appropriate name.

In any case, you should check the Zerto configuration for networks and network tags, and determine how best to configure the recovery networks for your environment. 

Cloud users protect VMs with the disaster recovery service

In the cloud, on the VM control panel, there is a new button to Enable DR protection or Disable DR protection for a deployed VM.

To protect a deployed VM with the disaster recovery service, the user just clicks the shield DR protect button.

Behind the scenes, the platform creates Zerto Protection Groups. The Zerto Protection Group are transparent to the Abiquo user and initially, Abiquo creates one Protection Group for the VMs in each Abiquo virtual appliance.

Abiquo does not make changes to protection groups and the user cannot move a DR protected VM to another Virtual appliance. If a protection group already exists, the administrator may need to delete it directly in Zerto to enable the user to protect the VM.

On the VM icon, if the VM is protected, the DRaaS shield symbol is drawn with a darker line.

Failover and failover testing

In this version, you should use Zerto directly to perform all failover tests and Zerto will perform failovers.
After a failover, you can capture the VM into Abiquo in the recovery datacenter. See Import and capture virtual machines

Related links:

• Privileges

• Configure dashboard display

• Pricing View

• Abiquo and Zerto test environment

• Abiquo Configuration Properties

• Protection managers

• Create an external network for cross-platform networking

• Manage Enterprises