4.1

Virtual machines in all other priority groups are recovered serially per ESX host to enable a group of machines
that spans several hosts to recover in parallel. During this type of recovery, machines on a specific ESX host
are recovered in the order specified by the list, but the recovery order of the entire list is subject to the
assignment of virtual machines to hosts. For example, if the first three normal-priority virtual machines are
hosted on one ESX host and the fourth is hosted on a different ESX host, the fourth machine in the list might
be recovered before the second or third.
Because vCenter limits the number of virtual machines that can be powered on in a single request, recovery
plans cannot power on more than 20 virtual machines at a time even if more than 20 ESX hosts available.
Recovery Plan Time-Outs and Pauses
Several kinds of time-outs can occur during the execution of recovery plan steps. These time-outs cause the
plan to pause for a specified interval to give the step time to complete.
For information about changing these defaults, see “Change Recovery Site Settings,” on page 60.
NOTE Message steps force the plan to pause until they are acknowledged. Before you add a message step to
a recovery plan, make sure that it is really necessary. Before you test or run a recovery plan that contains
message steps, make
sure that someone can monitor the plan's progress and respond to the messages as needed.
Steps That Are Part of All Recovery Plans
The following high-level steps occur during test recoveries and recoveries:
1
Initiate storage operations. The specific set of operations depends on the SRA and whether the recovery
is being run as a test.
2
Unregister placeholder virtual machines and register recovered virtual machines with the recovery site
vCenter. If any placeholder machines have had settings such as resource pool and memory allocation
modified, those settings are applied to the recovered virtual machine.
3
Suspend local virtual machines at the recovery site if requested.
4 Recover high-priority virtual machines. For each virtual machine in the list, the plan runs each step listed in
“Virtual Machine Recovery Steps,” on page 49. High priority machines are always recovered in list order,
regardless of how many physical ESX hosts are involved.
5 Recover normal-priority virtual machines. For each virtual machine in the list, the plan runs each step
listed in “Virtual Machine Recovery Steps,” on page 49. Machines in this priority group are recovered
serially per ESX host.
6 Recover low-priority virtual machines. For each virtual machine in the list, the plan runs each step listed in
“Virtual Machine Recovery Steps,” on page 49. Machines in this priority group are recovered serially
per ESX host.
7 Recover no-power-on virtual machines. For each virtual machine in the list, the plan runs steps 1 and 2 of
“Virtual Machine Recovery Steps,” on page 49.
At this point, the recovery is complete. If the recovery was run as a test, the plan pauses and prompts you to
verify that the test was successful.
Virtual Machine Recovery Steps
Whenever a virtual machine is recovered, regardless of its priority, the recovery plan runs the following steps:
1 Apply IP customization and verify that it succeeded within the specified period.
2 Run any pre-power-on command or message steps.
Chapter 5 Customizing Site Recovery Manager
VMware, Inc. 49