Are you looking for a disaster recovery environment without the cost and complexity of managing an off-site infrastructure?

IBM Cloud and Veeam have joined forces to help you easily set up an offsite replication site with Veeam Cloud Connect Replication. With this integration, you can focus on your business continuity and let IBM Cloud manage the infrastructure with no additional Veeam licensing costs nor compute need until failover or test.

We are now giving you a special offer to get started with your new DR environment, here are some examples of how the offer can be used:

• 8 vCPU, 32 GB RAM and 1,250 GBs of default storage, or
• Up to 9 TB of storage for 1 month for a powered-off DR environment, or 
• 3TB of storage for 3 months

This solution gives you a cost-effective, self-service disaster recovery solution to replicate your VMs to the cloud within minutes with rapid scalability. Learn more about this no-cost offer and remember to activate this $500 credit before the end of December 2020. Please refer to this link for any restrictions that may be applied to this offer.

There are three simple steps to enable this solution:

1. Redeem the $500 credit offer.
2. Deploy IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions.
3. Connect to IBM Cloud as Veeam Cloud Connect Replication (VCC-R) Target.

You can follow the step-by-step guidance below.

Redeem the $500 credit offer

Redeeming the offer is as easy as 1-2-3:

1. Login or create your IBM Cloud Account. (Note: Be sure your account is upgraded to either a pay-as-you-go or subscription account before proceeding.)
2. Within your account, click Manage and select Billing and usage from the drop-down list.

3. Select Promotions, enter the code FREE500VM, then click Apply.

Deploy IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared

1. After logging into your IBM Cloud Account, click the hamburger icon on the top left corner to show a drop-down of IBM Cloud Services. Click on the VMware option.

2. On the VMware page, you will see a variety of options. Choose the VMware Solutions Shared option. The difference between VMware Solutions Shared and VMware Solutions Dedicated is that the Shared option is a managed, multi-tenant deployment, while Dedicated is an unmanaged, single-tenant choice.

3. Under Pricing Plans, you will have two deployment options: On-Demand and Reserved. The On-Demand model is shown below.
   • On-Demand: You only pay for compute when you consume the capacity in an hourly pricing model.
     • Fill out the Virtual Data Center Name with any name you choose. For example, I choose “DR-Site,” as my Virtual Data Center Name.
     • Set the Virtual data center capacity limit, as it creates the vCPU and GB RAM limit that the Virtual Data Center cannot exceed to help eliminate any bill shock. 
   • Reserved: You “reserve” the compute in advance to guarantee the capacity is available when you need it.
     • Fill out the Virtual Data Center Name with any name you choose. For example, I choose “DR-Site,” as my Virtual Data Center Name.
     • Choose the Virtual data center capacity that you want to order and reserve.

4. Once you have set your Virtual Data Center Name and Capacity Limit, click the Add to estimate button on the bottom-right corner.

5. The pricing calculator will pop up, and you can enter your environment configurations to generate a price. One of the important distinctions when you choose the On-Demand Virtual Data Center is that you are not ordering any of the Compute, Storage, and Images. The only thing being ordered is the Base, which is a monthly charge that includes the Highly Available Edge Gateway and 5 Public IP Addresses. The Compute, Storage, and Images will be charged based on consumption. The Reserved option will charge for Compute when provisioned.

6. You can save the configuration to generate an approximate monthly price. On-Demand will be metered and charged by an hourly rate, but within the price calculator, we generate a monthly price. If you are happy with the estimate and want to provision the environment, click the Create button on the bottom-left corner. You will be charged for the Base Instance when provisioned, as this is an On-Demand Plan, and the rest of the charges will be based on consumption within the Virtual Data Center.

7. Once the environment is provisioned, the first step will be to Set Organization Admin Password. Please save this password, as it will be the Admin password and is needed for the initial login. Once you log into vCloud Director Portal, you can create individualized usernames and passwords.

8. After the Organization Admin Password is created, scroll down and click on the Veeam Cloud Connect button. The Veeam Backups is a backup service for existing IBM Cloud for VMware Solutions Shared customers to back up their existing environment.

9. Use the username prefix outlined in Step 8—”e40d77201bf7409c8026356a6929ea30\username”. The password will be the same password as associated with the vCloud Director Portal. Note: You will use this console to view your failover plans after completing the connection to IBM Cloud as a VCC-R target.

10. You will see failover plans you’ve created only after the VCC-R target registration is completed (as shown in image).

Connect to IBM Cloud as VCC-R Target

1. Do one of the following:
   • Open the Backup Infrastructure view. Select the Service Providers node in the inventory pane and click Add Provider on the ribbon.
   • Open the Backup Infrastructure view. Right-click the Service Providers node in the inventory pane and select Add service provider.
   • Open the Backup Infrastructure view. Select the Service Providers node in the inventory pane and click Add Service Provider in the working area.

2. At the Service Provider step of the wizard, specify settings for the cloud gateway that IBM Cloud has provided to you:
   • Enter the IBM Cloud DNS name or IP address for Dallas (http://dalvccgw.vmware-solutions.cloud.ibm.com/) into the DNS name or IP address field, and enter a full DNS name or IP address of the cloud gateway.
   • In the Port field, enter “6180”, as that is to specify the port over which the your Veeam backup server will communicate with the cloud gateway.
   • In the Description field, provide a description for the SP you are adding.
   • Select the Allow this Veeam Backup & Replication installation to be managed by the service provider check box if the SP should manage the tenant’s Veeam backup server under the Backup as a Service agreement. With this option selected, Veeam Backup & Replication will install the remote management agent on the tenant’s Veeam backup server. The SP will be able to manage this backup server with the Veeam Availability Console.

3. At the Credentials step of the wizard, verify TLS certificate settings and specify settings for the tenant account that you want to use to connect to the cloud repository.
   • At the top of the wizard window, Veeam Backup & Replication displays information about the TLS certificate obtained from the SP side. You can view the certificate settings and verify the TLS certificate. TLS certificate verification is optional. You can use this option to verify self-signed TLS certificates. TLS certificates signed by the CA do not require additional verification:
     • To view the TLS certificate, click the certificate link.
     • To verify the TLS certificate with a thumbprint, copy the thumbprint you obtained from the SP to the Clipboard and enter it to the Fingerprint for certificate verification field.
   • From the Credentials list, select credentials for the tenant account that the SP has provided to you. If you have not set up credentials beforehand, click the Manage accounts link or click Add on the right to add necessary credentials.
   • You must provide credentials for the vCloud Director tenant account in one of the following formats: Organization\Username or Username@Organization. For example: TechCompanyOrg\Administrator.

4. At the Resources step of the wizard, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically enumerate resources provided to the tenant on the cloud repository and display the results in the wizard window. Enumeration of storage resources on the cloud repository may take some time. Wait for the processing to complete and click Next.

5. At the Replica Resources step of the wizard, Veeam Backup & Replication will automatically enumerate compute, storage, and network resources provided to the tenant for processing tenant VM replicas. Replication resources can be provided to the tenant in one of the following ways:
   • Through hardware plans. If you add the SP using the credentials of a standalone tenant account, available replication resources will be displayed in the Available hardware plans list at the Replica Resources step of the wizard.
   • Through Organization vDCs. If you add the SP using the credentials of a vCloud Director tenant account, available replication resources will be displayed in the Available organization vDC list at the Replica Resources step of the wizard.

     Enumeration of replication resources may take some time. Wait for the processing to complete and click Next.

6. At the Network Extension step of the wizard, Veeam Backup & Replication will display the network extension appliance that will be deployed on the tenant’s side. This network extension appliance will be used for establishing and maintaining connection between production VMs and VM replicas on the cloud host after partial site failover. In the Network extension appliances section of the Network Extension step of the wizard, you can view default network extension settings, edit settings for the network extension appliance, and add one or several network extension appliances in case there are multiple IP networks in your production environment. To learn more, see Network Extension Appliance. Note: Consider the following:
   • If you do not plan to perform partial site failover, you can remove the network extension appliance from the Network extension appliances list and proceed to the next step of the wizard. In this case, Veeam Backup & Replication will not deploy the network extension appliance on the source virtualization host.
   • If you add the SP using the credentials of the vCloud Director tenant account, and the SP uses an NSX Edge Gateway or IPsec VPN connection to enable network access to your VM replicas after failover, you do not need to deploy the network extension appliance. Click Remove next to the Network extension appliances list, and then click Apply to proceed to the next step of the wizard.

7. At the Apply step of the wizard, Veeam Backup & Replication will save information about resources available from your SP and deploy the specified number of network extension appliances on your production host. Wait for the required operations to complete and click Next to continue.

8. At the Summary step of the wizard, complete the procedure of SP adding. Review the configuration information on the added SP. Click Finish to exit the wizard.

9. For more details around failing over with Veeam, please check here for more information.