6.1
Table Of Contents
- Introduction
- Requirements
- Evaluation Workflow
- Exercise 1: Pairing Sites
- Exercise 2: Configure Inventory Mappings
- Exercise 3: Configure placeholder datastore
- Exercise 4: Add Array Manager and Enable Array Pair (If Using Array Replication)
- Exercise 5: Create a Protection Group
- Exercise 6: Create a Recovery Plan
- Exercise 7: Testing a Recovery Plan
- Exercise 8: Running a Recovery Plan
- Exercise 9: Reprotect a Recovery Plan and Fail Back
- Exercise 10: Virtual Machine Recovery Properties
- Conclusion
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A question often asked is whether replication continues during the test of a recovery plan. The
answer is yes. Site Recover Manager utilizes snapshots - either array snapshots (or clones) with
array replication or virtual machine snapshots with vSphere Replication - as part of the recovery
plan test process. This approach allows powering on and modifying virtual machines recovered
as part of the test while replication continues to avoid RPO violations.
Figure 20. vSphere Replication Test Image Folders on Virtual SAN
Virtual machines that are in a recovery plan that is being tested will display unique icons in the
vCenter Server inventory at the recovery site.
Figure 21. Powered on Virtual Machines in a Recovery Plan Test
At this point, guest operating system administrators and application owners can log into their
recovered virtual machines to verify functionality, perform additional testing, and so on. Site
Recovery Manager easily supports recovery plan testing periods of varying lengths - from a few
minutes to several days. However, longer tests tend to consume more storage capacity at the
recovery site. This is due to the nature of snapshot growth as data is written to the snapshot.
Recommendation: Closely monitor storage capacity utilization at the recovery site during
recovery plan tests, if capacity is limited. Configure vCenter Server alarms to alert
administrators when free space is getting low on datastores at the recovery site.
See Test a Recovery Plan in the Site Recovery Manger documentation.
When testing is complete, a recovery plan must be “cleaned up”. This operation powers off
virtual machines and removes snapshots associated with the test. Once the cleanup workflow is
finished, the recovery plan is ready for testing or running.