System information

Recovery Plan Steps
A recovery plan runs a series of steps that must be performed in a specific order for a given workflow such
as a planned migration or reprotect. You cannot change the order or purpose of the steps, but you can insert
your own steps that display messages and run commands.
Site Recovery Manager runs different recovery plan steps in different ways.
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Some steps run during all recoveries.
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Some steps run only during test recoveries.
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Some steps are always skipped during test recoveries.
Understanding recovery steps, their order, and the context in which they run is important when you
customize a recovery plan.
Recovery Order
When you run a recovery plan, it starts by powering off the virtual machines at the protected site.
Site Recovery Manager powers off virtual machines according to the priority that you set, with high-priority
machines powering off last. Site Recovery Manager omits this step when you test a recovery plan.
Site Recovery Manager powers on groups of virtual machines on the recovery site according to the priority
that you set. Before a priority group starts, all of the virtual machines in the next-higher priority group must
recover or fail to recover. If dependencies exist between virtual machines in the same priority group,
Site Recovery Manager first powers on the virtual machines on which other virtual machines depend. If
Site Recovery Manager can meet the virtual machine dependencies, Site Recovery Manager attempts to
power on as many virtual machines in parallel as vCenter Server supports.
Recovery Plan Timeouts and Pauses
Several types of timeouts can occur during the running of recovery plan steps. Timeouts cause the plan to
pause for a specified interval to allow the step time to finish.
Message steps force the plan to pause until the user acknowledges the message. Before you add a message
step to a recovery plan, make sure that it is necessary. Before you test or run a recovery plan that contains
message steps, make sure that a user can monitor the progress of the plan and respond to the messages as
needed.
Creating Custom Recovery Steps
You can create custom recovery steps that run commands or present messages to the user during a recovery.
Site Recovery Manager can run custom steps either on the Site Recovery Manager Server or in a virtual
machine that is part of the recovery plan. You cannot run custom steps on virtual machines that are to be
suspended.
During reprotect, Site Recovery Manager preserves all custom recovery steps in the recovery plan. If you
perform a recovery or test after a reprotect, custom recovery steps are run on the new recovery site, which
was the original protected site.
After reprotect, you can usually use custom recovery steps that show messages directly without
modifications. You might need to modify some custom recovery steps after a reprotect, if these steps run
commands that contain site-specific information, such as network configurations.
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Types of Custom Recovery Steps on page 57
You can create different types of custom recovery steps to include in recovery plans.
Site Recovery Manager Administration
56 VMware, Inc.