Hey Checkyourlogs Fans,

In this post, we are going to look at the steps required to protect your infrastructure using Azure Site Recovery integrated into Windows Admin Center.

First, let’s have a look at our Windows Admin Center and our source Hyper-V Server.

 


 

The Virtual Machine that I would like to protect in this post is a VM called TCCALRDS02.


There is a Help protect your VMs from disasters by using Azure Site Recovery – Set up Now link. Let’s try that.


 

When clicked it opens Register the gateway with Azure and has three steps. Device Login, Register, and Grant Permission.


 

Step 1 – Device Login

Click on the Copy Code button

Click on the Device Login link.

Paste the Code in the Window that pops up.


 


 

When prompted choose the Azure Subscription you want to connect to.


 

Once completed you can close this tab as prompted.


 

Step 2 – Register your Azure AD Tenant ID

When prompted choose your Azure AD Tenant ID


Click Register the button is at the bottom of the window.

 

Step 3 – Register the Gateway with Azure

 


Click the link to Go to the Azure AD App Registration


 

Click on Settings, Required Permissions, and grant permissions


 

Back in the Windows Admin Center click Continue


 

Check the Notification Pane to ensure the registration has succeeded.


 

Next, We need to Setup the host with Azure Site Recovery to do this click on the Help protect your VMs from disasters by using Azure Site Recovery – Setup Now Link

Note: Ensure that you allow pop-ups from the Windows Admin Center Site.

 


 

 

Configure the options for Subscription, Location, and Vault


 

 

Once ready click on Set Up ASR


 

 

Troubleshooting

During the setup I ran into this error Set up the host with Azure Site Recovery failed – Error Couldn’t setup VM Protection. There is no disconnect command associated with this runspace.

 


 

What I did to work around this issue was open the Azure Portal in the Same Chrome session and try again.


 

That seemed to get around this issue I faced.

 

 

 

 

Select the Virtual Machine that you want to start protecting in the Virtual Machine Inventory from Windows Admin Center. Click on More, and click Protect VM


 

On the Protect “VM” with Azure Site Recovery pane fill in the details for the storage account and then click Protect VM

 


 

Verify that protection has started


 

You can open your Azure Portal and check the Recovery Services Vault and Storage Account Created by Windows Admin Center

 


 

 

Initially, the view in the Azure Portal looks like the screen shot below. I can see my Windows Server 2019 Hyper-V Server is listed à No VM’s are showing up yet as we need to give this a bit of time.

 


 

 

Per Microsoft Documentation à You should wait for the Site Recovery Settings Completed before proceeding to protect VM’s. Microsoft suggests this will take approximately 10 minutes or so to complete.

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/manage/windows-admin-center/use/azure-site-recovery

 

 

Note: I had to manually finish configuring the Azure Site Recovery protection as the Windows Admin Center view didn’t ever finish. It seemed to complete the initial setup and then got stuck somewhere along the lines. As this is still on the insiders, build I didn’t want to spend a lot of time troubleshooting. What I did as a workaround was as follows:

In the Azure Portal completed the setup of Azure Site Recovery Prepare Infrastructure and Step1: Replicate Application I manually selected the VNETs and VM’s to get the protection going.

 


 

Then my view in Windows Admin Center changed to this:


 

And in the Azure Portal:


 

 

A little trick to watch the progress of the inial sync is to open Hyper-V Manager you can see the progress in the Status field.

 


 

You can also view the same progress from the Azure Portal


 

You can also see the Site Recovery Jobs in the Azure Portal


 

 

So at this point, I’m pretty happy with my experience setting up Azure Site Recovery with Windows Admin Center. It would have been nice to complete the configuration from Windows Admin Center but this is not GA code, and still, insiders build of both Windows Server 2019 and Windows Admin Center 1808.

 

Overall it took about one hr to complete the setup and get going with this.

 

Hopefully, this helps you in your journey learning Windows Admin Center and Azure Site Recovery.

 

Thanks,

 

Dave