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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. SRM
powers off virtual machines according to the priority that you set, with high-priority machines powering off
last. SRM omits this step when you test a recovery plan.
SRM 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, SRM first powers on the
virtual machines on which other virtual machines depend. If SRM can meet the virtual machine
dependencies, SRM 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.
Specify the Recovery Priority of a Virtual Machine
By default, SRM sets all virtual machines in a new recovery plan to recovery priority level 3. You can
increase or decrease the recovery priority of a virtual machine.
If you change the priority of a virtual machine, SRM applies the new priority to all recovery plans that
contain this virtual machine.
SRM starts virtual machines on the recovery site according to the priority that you set. SRM starts priority 1
virtual machines first, then priority 2 virtual machines second, and so on. SRM uses VMware Tools
heartbeat to discover when a virtual machine is running on the recovery site. In this way, SRM can ensure
that all virtual machines of a given priority are running before it starts the virtual machines of the next
priority. For this reason, you must install VMware Tools on protected virtual machines.
Procedure
1 Click Recovery Plans in the left pane, select a recovery plan, and click the Virtual Machines tab or the
Recovery Steps tab.
2 Right-click a virtual machine and select Priority.
3 Select a new priority for the virtual machine.
The highest priority is 1. The lowest priority is 5.
4 Click Yes to confirm the change of priority.
Creating Custom Recovery Steps
You can create custom recovery steps that run commands or present messages to the user during a recovery.
SRM can run custom steps either on the SRM Server or in a virtual machine that is part of the recovery plan.
Site Recovery Manager Administration
58 VMware, Inc.