This is an archive version of the document. To get the most up-to-date information, see the current version.

Welcome to Veeam Availability Orchestrator

Veeam Availability Orchestrator (VAO) extends the functionality of Veeam Availability Suite to orchestrate disaster recovery (DR) processes in VMware vSphere environments, support one-click recovery for critical applications or even an entire site, and provide rich features for documentation, testing and execution.

Note

Veeam Availability Orchestrator is built on top of Veeam Backup & Replication and Veeam ONE, and this guide assumes that you have a good understanding of these solutions.

VAO leverages the backup, replication, failover and restore capabilities of Veeam Backup & Replication to build DR workflows, automate recovery processes and eliminate error-prone manual steps. VAO also provides reporting capabilities that let enterprises document their DR plans to meet compliance requirements. With VAO, you can do the following:

Orchestrate disaster recovery — create workflows to orchestrate recovery operations for Veeam Backup & Replication backups and replicas.
Automate DR testing — build test schedules to automate the verification of failover and restore plans, with isolated and low-impact testing of VM backups, replicas and applications they run.
Meet DR compliance requirements — generate and automatically update documentation for DR procedures to eliminate the problem of outdated DR plans. documentation for DR procedures to eliminate the problem of outdated DR plans.

In version 3.0, storage plans were introduced to the VAO functionality, in addition to existing replica and restore plans. Storage plans allow recovery orchestration that is based on replicated storage snapshots created on NetApp storage systems. VAO can work with any NetApp SnapMirror snapshots, whether created with NetApp native tools or 3rd-party integration. It is recommended that you drive the creation and transfer of storage snapshots using Veeam Backup & Replication, as described in the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide, section Integration with Storage Systems.