Test Recovery

One of the primary benefits of Site Recovery Manager is the ability to test recovery plans--coordinating the failover of the replication and recovery of virtual machines without affecting the configuration, state, protection, or connectivity of the original source VMs.

1. Issue a synchronization of the relevant FlashArray volumes to the target.
2. Create new FlashArray volumes from the replicated snapshots on the target array.
3. Connect the volumes to the appropriate hosts and/or host groups.
4. Rescan the target cluster(s).
5. Resignature and mount the datastores.
6. Power-on the VMs and configure them according to the recovery plan.

   Below is a recovery plan with 9 virtual machines:

   

   These are spread across four datastores replicating from a FlashArray called flasharray-m50-1 to a FlashArray called flasharray-m20-1:

   

   These are all seen as replicated devices in SRM:

   

   These volumes are in a FlashArray protection group called srm-PG01:

   

   To initiate a test, click the Test button in SRM:

   

   A wizard will appear, with a default option called Replicate recent changes to recovery site selected:

   

   If this is selected, the SRA will create a new replication point-in-time. If you de-select it, the SRA will just use the latest point-in-time found for each volume. Note though that during failover, the SRA will always still use the latest available point-in-time. So if the SRA creates a new one for the test, and between the completion of that point-in-time and before creating the recovery volumes a new point-in-time is created, that new one will be used for recovery.

   Click Next.

   

   Confirm the test and click Finish.

   If you kept "replicate recent changes" selected, the SRA will initiate a new point-in-time on the target array and will give the protection group snapshot created a name including a UUID and the suffix of -puresra:

   

   Note:

   The SRA will create a new replication point-in-time and will apply the retention policy specified in the protection group to it. So the protection group snapshot will be destroyed and eradicate according to the schedule. If preferred you can manually destroy/eradicate it earlier.

   The SRA will then create one new volume for each protected volume on the target array with the original name of the volume plus a suffix of -puresra-testFailover:

   

   They will then automatically be connected to the appropriate hosts and/or host groups. SRM will then rescan the cluster and the datastores will be resignatured and mounted:

   

   Note that the datastores will have the prefix applied to their names of "suffix-XXXXXXXX" by SRM. This can be automatically removed by enabling the advanced SRM setting described here:

   SRM User Guide: Site Recovery Manager Advanced Options

   The VMs will be registered and configured according to your recovery plan.

   

   Note:

   Do not rename the test failover volumes during the test--this will cause them to not be cleaned up and you will need to destroy them manually.