Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 virtual machines

To back up a Windows Azure or Amazon EC2 virtual machine, install a protection agent on the machine. The backup and recovery operations are the same as with a physical machine. Nevertheless, the machine is counted as virtual when you set quotas for the number of machines in a cloud deployment.

The difference from a physical machine is that Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 virtual machines cannot be booted from bootable media. If you need to recover to a new Windows Azure or Amazon EC2 virtual machine, follow the procedure below.

To recover a machine as a Windows Azure or Amazon EC2 virtual machine

1. Create a new virtual machine from an image/template in Windows Azure or Amazon EC2. The new machine must have the same disk configuration as the machine that you want to recover.
2. Install Agent for Windows or Agent for Linux on the new machine.
3. Recover the backed-up machine as described in "Physical machine". When configuring the recovery, select the new machine as the target machine.

Network requirements

The agents installed on the backed-up machines must be able to communicate with the management server over the network.

On-premises deployment

• If both the agents and the management server are installed in the Azure/EC2 cloud, all machines are already located in the same network. No additional actions are required.

• If the management server is located outside the Azure/EC2 cloud, the machines in the cloud will not have network access to the local network where the management server is installed. To enable the agents installed on such machines to communicate with the management server, a virtual private network (VPN) connection between the local (on-premises) and the cloud (Azure/EC2) network must be created. For instructions about how to create the VPN connection, refer to the following articles:

  Amazon EC2: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonVPC/latest/UserGuide/VPC_VPN.html#vpn-create-cgw

  Windows Azure: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/vpn-gateway/vpn-gateway-howto-site-to-site-resource-manager-portal

Cloud deployment

In a cloud deployment, the management server is located in one of the Acronis data centers and is thus reachable by the agents. No additional actions are required.