Recovering Windows servers to the AWS cloud

You can recover one or more Windows servers to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) in the AWS account where your backups are stored. During the recovery process, an EC2 instance is created for each recovered server. The recovered servers automatically replace the original devices in the Management Console and backups continue on the new servers.

You can also test Windows server recoveries. In test recoveries, servers are recovered but do not replace the original devices in the Management Console.

After recovering a server to an EC2 instance, remote desktop will be enabled on the server and the firewall will allow remote desktop connections to the server.

To recover one or more Windows Servers to Amazon EC2, do the following:

  1. In the Management Console, start the disaster recovery. Select an EC2 instance type for each recovered server, and download your Disaster Recovery package. See Starting a recovery to the AWS cloud.

    The Disaster Recovery package is a .zip file that includes a Disaster Recovery User Guide (DRRunbook.html), a CloudFormation template for creating EC2 instances and resources, a setup.ps1 script for orchestrating the creation of required resources in your AWS account, and a finalize.ps1 script for ensuring that recovered servers can boot properly.

  2. Follow the instructions in the Disaster Recovery User Guide to install prerequisites, create one or more EC2 instances and required resources, connect to the EC2 instances, and recover each server.

    To create EC2 instances and required resources, you must configure the AWS CLI with an IAM user's access key and secret access key. The IAM user must be in the AWS account where your backups are stored and must have the permissions described in AWS IAM role for recovering servers to the AWS cloud.

When your original environment is operational and you no longer need the recovered servers in your AWS account, remove the AWS resources that were created during the disaster recovery. Leaving these resources in place can result in unnecessary AWS charges and may cause you to you to reach AWS service limits. For more information, see Decommissioning AWS resources after recovery.

Starting a recovery to the AWS cloud

To start a recovery to the AWS cloud:

  1. In the navigation pane, go to Server Backup > Devices.

  2. Do one of the following:

    • To recover one server, click the name of the device that you want to recover. On the device details page, click Disaster Recovery.

    • To recover one or more servers, click the name of the site with the device or devices that you want to recover. (If you are using Business view in the Management Console, you do not have to click a site name.) Select the check box for each device that you want to recover. Click Disaster Recovery. If a message states that unsupported devices are selected, read which devices cannot be recovered, and click Next.

      Note: You can select a maximum of 25 devices to recover at one time.

    Note: You cannot recover devices with the Awaiting first backup, Scheduled for Deletion, or Expired status.

  3. On the Disaster Recovery page, click Recover to the cloud, and then click Next.

  4. Read the overview of the disaster recovery process, and then click Next.

  5. Do one of the following:

    • To recover one or more servers, click Recover one or more servers after a disaster.

    • To test the server recovery, click Test the disaster recovery process. In a test recovery, servers are recovered but do not replace the original devices in the Management Console.

  6. Click Next.

    The Disaster Recovery page shows the AWS region where the server or servers will be recovered and a Device Selection area where you can choose an EC2 instance type for each recovered server. Selected devices that cannot be recovered appear in the Device Selection area, but you cannot select EC2 instances for them.

    Note: Servers are recovered to the AWS region where the site's backups are stored.

  7. For each server that you are recovering, select an EC2 instance type by doing the following in the Instance Type column:

    1. Filter the list of EC2 instance types in the Select an instance list by doing the following:

      • In the CPUs list, select the approximate number of CPUs for the EC2 instance.

        Note: The number of CPUs and amount of RAM in the original server appear in the Device Name column under the server name.

      • In the RAM list, select the approximate amount of memory (in GB) for the EC2 instance.

      • To restrict the list of EC2 instances to cost-effective instances that are suitable for most applications, make sure that the Show Preferred Instances check box is selected. When this check box is selected, the Select an instance list only includes EC2 instances in the M (General purpose), C (Compute optimized), T (Burstable performance), and R (Memory optimized) series. For more information, see Amazon EC2 instance types documentation on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) website.

      The Select an instance list includes EC2 instance types that are available in the site's AWS region and match the filter criteria.

      Note: When restoring to the AWS cloud, you can only restore to an EC2 instance with the UEFI boot mode.

    2. In the Select an instance list, choose the EC2 instance type for the recovered server.

  8. Click Next.

  9. Click Download All Documents.

    A Disaster Recovery package (CloudDisasterRecoveryArtifacts.zip) file is downloaded that includes a Disaster Recovery User Guide (DRRunbook.html), a CloudFormation template for creating EC2 instances and resources, and scripts for creating and finalizing your servers. Recovery codes (also known as a disaster recovery or DR codes) in the package can only be used once and are valid for one week. The expiry date and time of the DR code for a server appears on the Summary tab of its device details page.

    Note: If you download a new Disaster Recovery package for the same servers, it will replace the previous one. You can only use the most recently-downloaded Disaster Recovery package to restore your servers.

  10. Click Finish.

  11. In the confirmation message box, click Close.

    You can then follow the instructions in the Disaster Recovery User Guide (DRRunbook.html) and use the provided scripts in the Disaster Recovery package to:

    1. Create an EC2 instance for each server you are recovering and create required files and resources.

    2. Connect to your servers in AWS.

      IMPORTANT: If you are recovering a server to an EC2 instance and the original server is still accessible in your network, you might have trouble connecting to the EC2 instance. To prevent this issue, turn off the original server or disconnect it from the network.

    3. Recover data to each EC2 instance using the BMR Agent. The BMR Agent is pre-installed on each EC2 instance. For detailed instructions, see Recovering a Windows server.

    4. Finalize the recovery to ensure that servers can boot properly.

    If you recovered one or more servers (rather than testing the recovery process), the recovered servers replace the original servers in the Management Console and backups continue automatically.