- This video demonstrates
how to use the AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery,
Mass Failback Automation Client or DRSFA
to automate the failback of multiple recovery instances
to the source VMware environment.
For this demo, we have three virtual machines
which are located in our on-premises VMware environment.
These are the original source servers
that were replicated with AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery
and then recovered on AWS during a disaster event.
You can see these three recovered servers
now running natively on the Amazon elastic compute cloud
or EC2 console.
We will be using the DRSFA client
to automate the failback steps
to recover back to the source VMware environment.
First, we need to create a VMware user
in the source VMware environment,
which the DRSFA client uses
to automate the VMware actions required for failback.
In this example, we have a user called DRSFA user
with the permissions shown on the screen
assigned via role assignment.
You can get more information about the required permissions
by visiting the AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery documentation.
We have downloaded the latest AWS DRS failback client
and uploaded it to the VMware datastore.
The download URL is shown on screen.
You should modify specifying the correct region
for your use case.
As per the documentation,
we have deployed an Ubuntu server
within our source VMware environment.
This is where we will install, configure
and run the DRSFA client.
This server must run Python 3.9.0.4 with pip installed.
Other versions of Python will not work.
Now that we've handled the prerequisites,
we're ready to download the DRSFA client.
Install it using the supplied shell script.
If prompted, enter the pseudo password.
Once the installation is complete,
we need to create a password that is used to authenticate
with the VMs running the DRS failback client.
Run the following command to generate the seed.iso file.
When prompted, enter a secure password,
upload the generated iso file
to the same datastore as the DRS failback client is stored.
Now that we have completed the initial installation,
we need to generate the required AWS credentials
and then run the DRSFA client.
Navigate to the AWS management console
and search for IAM under fine services,
select users from the left hand navigation menu,
then select add users,
give the user a username,
then select programmatic access.
Next, choose the attach existing policies option,
search for and select the AWS elastic disaster
recovery failback policy.
Add any tags you require then select create user,
take note of or download the access and secret keys
because we will need these later in the process.
Once the user is created,
we to add additional inline policies
to allow the user to use the generated credentials.
Select the newly created user,
add an inline policy, select DRS as the service,
then select describe source servers as the action,
give the inline policy a name
then create the policy.
Add a second inline policy,
select STS under service,
then select get caller identity as the action.
Give the inline policy a name, then create the policy.
To allow the DRSFA client logs
to be sent to Amazon CloudWatch,
create a CloudWatch log group
called DRS mass failback automation.
If this log group is not created, or if it's created
with the wrong name, the DRSFA client will still work
but logs will not be sent to CloudWatch.
When you run the DRSFA client,
a number of parameters must be provided
such as the vCenter configuration information
and the AWS credentials that we previously generated.
Here you can see an example run command.
Now we will run the DRSFA client,
passing the parameters that are unique to our environment.
From the DRSFA client menu, select one click failback.
Enter a custom prefix for the results output.
So it will be easier for you to find it later.
Enter yes to continue.
The failback replication process has now been initiated
for the three recovery instances.
We can see within the vCenter environment
that the source VMs have been powered off.
The failback client and seed.iso has been attached
and the VMs have been powered back on.
Once this process is complete,
the failback client will pair
with the corresponding recovery instance in AWS
and replication will be reversed.
Replication back to the on-premises source servers
is initiated from the source server
toward the recovery instance.
Only the Delta changes are replicated back
to the source servers.
The DRSFA client will report the status
on screen and to adjacent output file.
Here, we can see that the process was successful.
Monitor the failback progress
on the recovery instances page in the DRS console.
After the recovery instances show healthy status
under the data replication status column
and ready status under the failback state column,
we are able to failback to our vCenter environment
and then finalize the failback process.
Select the check box to the left of each instance idea
and choose failback.
On the continue with failback dialogue, choose failback.
Data replication back to the source server will be stopped
and the conversion process will be started.
This will finalize the failback process
and will create replica of each recovery instance
on the corresponding source server.
Once the failback is complete, the failback client will show
that the failback has been completed successfully.
You cannot too either terminate,
delete or disconnect the recovery instances.
Visit the AWS DRS product page
to learn more and get started.