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25 Disaster Recovery with Dell PS Series SANs and VMware vSphere Site Recovery Manager | TR1073
7 Recovery plans
A recovery plan is a run book plan that facilitates and automates the process of testing and failing over virtual
machines. The recovery plan can encompass any or all of the protection groups created on the protected site.
This allows administrators to configure and run various test scenarios. It also allows for more comprehensive
full site failover situations to be run. More detailed information can be found in the SRM Administration Guide,
but the following is an example of the steps taken. Recovery plans can be configured from either the
protected site or the recovery site and will prompt for the recovery plan location.
1. From the vSphere Web Client, log into either site, click on Home and select Site Recovery from
Inventories. Click Recovery Plans and then Create Recovery Plan from the menu bar.
2. Provide a name and description that clearly identifies what will be recovered by this recovery plan,
then select the relevant site-pair, and click Next.
3. Select the recovery site where the VMs will be recovered and click Next.
4. Select the Protection Groups that will make up this Recovery Plan. This process gives administrators
multiple granular recovery options for both testing and full site failover. Make the selection and click
Next.
5. The next screen provides test network options. Test networks are isolated network environments that
are created on the fly during the test to make sure that the VMs being brought online cannot interfere
with other running VMs including those in production. The test network can be changed if you have
additional switching requirements configured at the DR site such as an isolated test LAN with physical
systems. By default, SRM is set to automatically create a new vSwitch for the duration of test failover.
These vSwitches are isolated from other vSwitches that were created by other failover tests run at the
same time. Make your selection and click Next.