5.5

Creating, Testing, and Running
Recovery Plans 4
After you configure SRM at the protected and recovery sites, you can create, test, and run a recovery plan.
A recovery plan is like an automated run book. It controls every step of the recovery process, including the
order in which SRM powers on and powers off virtual machines, the network addresses that recovered
virtual machines use, and so on. Recovery plans are flexible and customizable.
A recovery plan includes one or more protection groups. You can include a protection group in more than
one recovery plan. For example, you can create one recovery plan to handle a planned migration of services
from the protected site to the recovery site, and another plan to handle an unplanned event such as a power
failure or natural disaster. Having these different recovery plans allows you to decide how to perform
recovery.
Testing a recovery plan runs the plan without affecting services at the protected or recovery sites, apart from
suspending non-critical virtual machines on the recovery site if you configure the recovery plan to do so.
You can perform planned migrations from the protected site to the recovery site or disaster recoveries by
running a recovery plan.
You can run only one recovery plan at a time to recover a particular protection group. If you simultaneously
test or run multiple recovery plans that specify the same protection group, only one recovery plan can
operate on the protection group. Other running recovery plans that specify the same protection group
report warnings for that protection group and the virtual machines it contains. The warnings explain that
the virtual machines were recovered, but do not report other protection groups that the other recovery plans
cover.
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Testing a Recovery Plan on page 36
When you create or modify a recovery plan, test it before you try to use it for planned migration or for
disaster recovery.
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Performing a Planned Migration or Disaster Recovery By Running a Recovery Plan on page 37
You can run a recovery plan under planned circumstances to migrate virtual machines from the
protected site to the recovery site. You can also run a recovery plan under unplanned circumstances if
the protected site suffers an unforeseen event that might result in data loss.
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Differences Between Testing and Running a Recovery Plan on page 38
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.
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How SRM Interacts with DPM and DRS During Recovery on page 39
Distributed Power Management (DPM) and Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) are not mandatory,
but SRM supports both services and enabling them provides certain benefits when you use SRM.
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How SRM Interacts with Storage DRS or Storage vMotion on page 39
You can use SRM when protecting virtual machines on sites that are configured for Storage DRS or
Storage vMotion if you follow certain guidelines.
VMware, Inc.
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