This is Blog 9 on VMware Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication.  This post will cover failover of your Recovery Plans

Current Progress

• Prod and DR Cluster
• Prod and DR Cluster
• 1 host per cluster with vSphere 5.5
• 1 Domain Controller (08R2) per site
• 1 vCenter Virtual Appliance (5.5) per site
• 1 SRM server per site. SQL express is installed on the same server
• SRM servers paired together
• Resources Mappings, Folder Mappings, network Mappings and Placeholder Datastores have been configured
• vSphere Replication has been installed
• VMs have been replicated with vSphere Replication
• Protection Groups and Recovery Plans have been created
• VM Recovery Properties Set
• Tested Recovery Plan

Recovery Plan Failover

Now it is time to Failover from Production to DR.  Login to SRM and go to your Recovery Plan.  Select the Recovery Option.

Recovery Confirmation.  There are 2 types of recovery, Planned and Disaster.  Planned will sync up your storage and requires the sites to be connected.  Disaster is a “We need to get going ASAP” situation.

Review the info and Start

The following thing will happen in this order: Sync Storage if possible, Shutdown protected VMs at Production, Restore ESXi hosts from standby, Begin the Recovery.

Once the VMs have recovered you will be up and running at your DR site.

The final blog in this series will demonstrate how to Re-protect back to the original Production site.