Migrate on-prem Hyper-V VMs to Azure using Veeam

Pre-requisites - Veeam (always refer to the latest VBR documentation)

• Windows 2008 and above Workloads
• Linux Workloads
• Valid Azure Subscription
• Azure Administrator account
• Storage account

Limitations

• VBR does not support restoring a logical sector size of 4096 bytes
• VBR does not support Bitlocker disks, instead uses Veeam Agent for MS Windows
• GPT partitions - with more than 4 partitions are not supported
• Disk size support - check the latest VBR documentation

Process to restore

• Install the VBR on one of the VM on-premises (or preferably in Azure)
• Add the Object storage (BLOB) as the backup repository
• Schedule the backup jobs for the VMs to be migrated. Choose the Object Storage repository. Make a note of the encryption password.
• Configure the Vnet and subnets where the VM need to be restored
• Configure the Azure Proxy Appliance (optional) but it improves the restore performance
• If Azure proxy cannot be deployed then there is a workaround to improve the performance, which I will mention later in the article.
• Confirm the backups are successful
• Plan for the outage Window and start the restore process.
  • The outage window will vary depending on the size of the VM.
• Launch the Restore Wizard from VBR and specify the details like
  • Restore to Public cloud > Restore to Azure Cloud
  • Select the workloads to be restored
  • Chose subscription and location
  • Specify the VM name, VM Size and disks
  • Configure network settings
    (the process is very intuitive)

Note: If Azure Proxy is not configured or if there is an error while configuring, try the restore without the Proxy. I had an issue where the restore was very slow and failed due to the restore over the internet connection and the proxy was not working either.

Workaround

• Created a new VM in Azure and Installed the VBR
• Imported the backups in the new VBR. You will need to disconnect the repository from the on-prem VBR server, first.
• You will need the encryption password set above to encrypt the backups.
• Once the Backups are imported then the restore process is very quick and it is all done in 3-4 hours ( 5 VMs with the average size of 300GB).

Always refer to the latest VBR documentation for limitations and new features.