Replication Group Options and Requirements for Azure Resource Manager and Azure Stack

When you configure a replication group for Azure Resource Manager, provide Azure-specific values for the destination site.

You can replicate to Azure Resource Manager from streaming backups for Azure Resource Manager, Hyper-V, or VMware, or to Azure Stack from Azure Stack streaming backups.

Requirements

Before you can create an Azure hypervisor (virtualization client), the Azure subscription must have a resource group defined.
Before you replicate or convert Red Hat Linux VMs to Azure, add required Hyper-V drivers to the VMs and perform a new backup of the VMs. For more information, see Linux VMs do not boot or are unreachable after conversion or replication to Azure.
Before you perform a backup for a Linux source VM that runs CentOS or Red Hat, verify that required Hyper-V drivers are installed on the source VM. Those drivers must be present on the source VM backup in order to boot the VM after conversion.
1. Enable Changed Block Tracking (CBT) for the source VM.
2. Take a snapshot of the source VM.
3. Run the following command to modify the boot image:
```
sudo dracut -f -v -N
```
4. Run the following command to verify that Hyper-V drivers are present in the boot image:
```
lsinitrd | grep hv
```
5. Verify that no dracut conf files (for example, /usr/lib/dracut/dracut.conf.d/01-dist.conf) contain the following line:
```
hostonly="yes"
```
6. Run a new backup to use for the conversion.
For more information, see Prepare a CentOS-based virtual machine for Azure.

Content Options

Hypervisors: Select the hypervisor for the source VMs.

When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.
Name: Enter a descriptive name for the replication group, or change the name.
Select VM group: Select an existing VM group, or select Create new VM group to add specific VMs and create a new VM group.

When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.
Update the replication group if VMs are added or removed from this VM group: Select this option when you are replicating all of the VMs in a VM group, to ensure that changes to the VM group will be reflected in replication operations.
Select VMs: Select specific virtual machines to be replicated and click OK.

You can select VMs from the specified VM group.
Plan: When you choose to create a new VM group, select a previously defined server plan for the group.

Target Options

Target: Select a previously defined replication target or click Create replication target to create a new replication target.

When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.
Access Node: Select a VSA proxy that can be used to perform the replication operation.
Schedule: The only available option is Immediately after the backup job completes.

Advanced Options

Deploy virtual machine only during failover: Select this option to deploy a VM only when a failover operation is requested.

By default, when this option is not selected, a destination virtual machine is deployed immediately after a replication operation completes.

Note

When both the Restore as Managed VM option and the Deploy virtual machine only during failover option are enabled, two copies of the disks (unmanaged and managed) are maintained in the storage account selected for staging for the incremental replication.
Select copy: Select the backup copy that should be used as source for the replication operation.

Override Options

Click Yes to override settings for specific VMs.

To change the destination settings for specific VMs, select the VMs from the Virtual machine list. You can enter the following information:

VM display name: Enter a string that is added to source VM names to create display names for the destination VMs.

You can only change this value when adding a new VM.
Resource group: Select the resource group in which the converted virtual machine should be created.

You can only change this value when adding a new VM.
Storage account: Select the storage account to be used for all selected virtual machines or disks.

You can only change this value when adding a new VM.
VM size: Select a VM size from the list. The VM sizes in the list are those that are available for the resource group you selected.
Virtual network: Select one of the available network interfaces for the resource group from the list.

You can specify any subnet in the same region as the selected resource group.

If you do not select a VNet, then the first VNet in the list and the first (default) subnet that it expands to are attached to the replicated VM.

Note

Static IP addresses from a source VM are not replicated to the destination VM.
Security group: Select a network security group for the destination VMs.

You can only change this value when adding a new VM.
Create public IP: Select this check box to create a public IP.

If a public IP address is not required on destination VMs, clear this selection. By default, a public IP address is assigned to Azure virtual machines during replication.
Restore as a managed VM: Select this check box to restore the VM as a managed disk for the destination VMs.

When you select this option, the restore operation creates virtual machine disks in the specified storage account, and then converts them to managed disks and attaches the disks to the restored virtual machine.