VMware Cloud on AWS provides a cloud-native experience for VMware-based workloads in the AWS ecosystem. Each VMware Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) runs in an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) and provides a full VMware stack (including vCenter Server), NSX-T software-defined networking, vSAN software-defined storage, and one or more ESXi hosts that provide compute and storage resources to the workloads. To configure a VMC environment on AWS, follow the steps at this link. A pilot-light cluster can also be used for DR purposes.

Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP is a fully managed service that provides highly reliable, scalable, high-performing, and feature-rich file storage built on the popular NetApp ONTAP file system. Follow the steps at this link to provision and configure FSx for ONTAP.

The next step is to use NetApp BlueXP and discover the provisioned FSx for ONTAP on AWS instance and replicate the desired datastore volumes from an on-premises environment to FSx for ONTAP with the appropriate frequency and NetApp Snapshot copy retention:

Follow the steps in this link to configure BlueXP. You can also use the NetApp ONTAP CLI to schedule replication following this link.

Change permissions on docker.sock: sudo chmod 666 /var/run/docker.sock.

After the platforms have been added, you can group the VMs you want to recover into resource groups. DRO resource groups allow you to group a set of dependent VMs into logical groups that contain their boot orders, boot delays, and optional application validations that can be executed upon recovery.

To start creating resource groups, complete the following steps:

You need a plan to recover applications in the event of a disaster. Select the source and destination vCenter platforms from the drop down and pick the resource groups to be included in this plan, along with the grouping of how applications should be restored and powered on (for example, domain controllers, then tier-1, then tier-2, and so on). Such plans are sometimes also called blueprints. To define the recovery plan, navigate to the Replication Plan tab and click New Replication Plan.

To start creating a replication plan, complete the following steps:

After the replication plan is created, the failover option, the test-failover option, or the migrate option can be exercised depending on the requirements. During the failover and test-failover options, the most recent SnapMirror Snapshot copy is used, or a specific Snapshot copy can be selected from a point-in-time Snapshot copy (per the retention policy of SnapMirror). The point-in-time option can be very helpful if you are facing a corruption event like ransomware, where the most recent replicas are already compromised or encrypted. DRO shows all available points in time. To trigger failover or test failover with the configuration specified in the replication plan, you can click Failover or Test failover.

The replication plan can be monitored in the task menu:

After failover is triggered, the recovered items can be seen in the VMC vCenter (VMs, networks, datastores). By default, the VMs are recovered to the Workload folder.

Failback can be triggered at the replication-plan level. For a test failover, the tear-down option can be used to roll back the changes and remove the FlexClone relationship. Failback related to failover is a two-step process. Select the replication plan and select Reverse data sync.

Once completed, you can trigger failback to move back to original production site.

From NetApp BlueXP, we can see that replication health has broken off for the appropriate volumes (those that were mapped to VMC as read-write volumes). During test failover, DRO does not map the destination or replica volume. Instead, it makes a FlexClone copy of the required SnapMirror (or Snapshot) instance and exposes the FlexClone instance, which does not consume additional physical capacity for FSx for ONTAP. This process makes sure that the volume is not modified and replica jobs can continue even during DR tests or triage workflows. Additionally, this process makes sure that, if errors occur or corrupted data is recovered, the recovery can be cleaned up without the risk of the replica being destroyed.

Recovering from ransomware can be a daunting task. Specifically, it can be hard for IT organizations to pin-point where the safe point of return is and, once that is determined, to protect recovered workloads from reoccurring attacks from, for example, sleeping malware or vulnerable applications.

DRO addresses these concerns by enabling you to recover your system from any available point in time. You can also recover workloads to functional and yet isolated networks so that applications can function and communicate with each other in a location where they are not exposed to north-south traffic. This gives your security team a safe place to conduct forensics and make sure there is no hidden or sleeping malware.