System information

Differences Between Testing and Running a Recovery Plan
Testing a recovery plan has no lasting effects on either the protected site or the recovery site, but running a
recovery plan has significant effects on both sites.
You need different privileges when testing and running a recovery plan.
Table 4‑1. How Testing a Recovery Plan Differs from Running a Recovery Plan
Area of Difference Test a Recovery Plan Run a Recovery Plan
Required privileges Requires Site Recovery
Manager.Recovery Plans.Test
permission.
Requires Site Recovery
Manager.Recovery Plans.Recovery
permission.
Effect on virtual machines at
protected site
None Site Recovery Manager shuts down
virtual machines in reverse priority order
and restores any virtual machines that are
suspended at the protected site.
Effect on virtual machines at
recovery site
Site Recovery Manager suspends
local virtual machines if the recovery
plan requires this.
Site Recovery Manager restarts
suspended virtual machines after
cleaning up the test.
Site Recovery Manager suspends local
virtual machines if the recovery plan
requires this.
Effect on replication Site Recovery Manager creates
temporary snapshots of replicated
storage at the recovery site. For
array-based replication,
Site Recovery Manager rescans the
arrays to discover them.
During a planned migration,
Site Recovery Manager synchronizes
replicated datastores, then stops
replication, then makes the target devices
at the recovery site writable. During a
disaster recovery, Site Recovery Manager
attempts the same steps, but if they do not
succeed, Site Recovery Manager ignores
protected site errors.
Network If you explicitly assign test networks,
Site Recovery Manager connects
recovered virtual machines to a test
network. If virtual machine network
assignment is Auto,
Site Recovery Manager assigns
virtual machines to temporary
networks that are not connected to
any physical network.
Site Recovery Manager connects
recovered virtual machines to the user-
specified datacenter network.
Interruption of recovery plan You can cancel a test at any time. You can cancel the recovery at any time.
Performing Test Recovery of Virtual Machines Across Multiple Hosts
on the Recovery Site
You can create recovery plans that recover virtual machines across multiple recovery site hosts in a
quarantined test network.
With Site Recovery Manager, the vSwitches can be DVS based and span hosts. If you accept the default test
network configured as Auto, then virtual machines that are recovered across hosts are placed in their own
test network during recovery plan tests. Each test switch is isolated between hosts. As a result, virtual
machines in the same recovery plan are isolated when the test recovery finishes. To allow the virtual
Chapter 4 Creating, Testing, and Running Recovery Plans
VMware, Inc. 45