Using BDRSuite to restore your on-premises virtual machines to Azure [sponsored]

Vembu recently added the capability to restore backups of your on-premises virtual machines to Azure. In this blog post, I want to explore the different use cases this capability brings and why you should care.

Goodbye secondary datacenter, recovering to Microsoft Azure

The most obvious use case is to use Microsoft Azure as a recovery point in the unfortunate event your on-premises datacenter fails.
The first question you might have now is why? Having a secondary site with equipment ready to run costs money. A lot of money, to be precise.

In the end, that secondary site is just an insurance policy waiting for its moment to shine. In the meantime, this secondary site needs to be maintained and kept up and running.
Of course, this is based on the assumption that you’re only using that secondary site for disaster recovery (DR) purposes and not in any active/active site like you might do for VDI.

Now imagine the following scenario. Your primary datacenter just failed, and you have an off-site backup. Great, you’ve won the first battle! What if you could consume the required capacity in Azure with the snip of a finger? And start recovering your virtual machines straight away.

You can be up and running again in no time and focus on bringing up your primary datacenter while business continues as usual. All without paying for a secondary site, with the required equipment, upfront.

Parting ways with your on-premises datacenter, migrating to Azure!

Besides your typical recovery scenario, there is a second use case. What if you want to move all your VMware vSphere workloads to Microsoft Azure? Typically you would have two options available:

• Spin up new Azure VMs and reinstall/migrate everything
• Using a converter tool to convert all virtual machines

Somewhere, the first option makes the most sense. As virtual machines tend to live for several years, they aren’t as “fresh” as they were when they were initially set up. So doing a reinstall of everything and only migrating required data allows you to do everything “right”.

Unfortunately, this takes a long time to realize and thus would increase the project’s cost before it even begins.

For the second option, you would have to purchase additional software, which you’d only use once. That sounds like a poor business case. 
What if the backup solution you are currently using could do this for you?
With the latest changes made to BDRSuite, you can pick up your existing VMware vSphere or Hyper-V virtual machines and migrate them to Microsoft Azure. 

Doing so would allow you to reap the following benefits:

• Drastically shorter migration time. In theory, you could be up and running the next day.
• No cost for additional tooling.
• Reduced cost for keeping the existing platform operational, as this can be turned off sooner.
• Reduced risk of errors, in comparison to the first option.

In closing

The capability to restore/migrate your existing on-premises virtual machines to Microsoft Azure is strong, introducing new use cases for BDRSuite. Depending on your organization’s preferences, remaining on-premises or migrating fully to Microsoft Azure, this capability should be able to cater to your needs.

If you want to get your hands dirty yourself, you can download the trial version of BDRSuite here. If you prefer to receive a product demo, you can request one here.