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.
You need different privileges when testing and running a recovery plan.
| Area of Difference | Test a Recovery Plan | Run a Recovery Plan |
|---|---|---|
| Required privileges | Requires permission. | Requires permission. |
| Effect on virtual machines at protected site | None | Site Recovery Manager shuts down virtual machines in reverse priority order and restores any virtual machines that are suspended at the protected site. |
| Effect on virtual machines at recovery site | Site Recovery Manager suspends local virtual machines if the recovery plan requires this. Site Recovery Manager restarts suspended virtual machines after cleaning up the test. | Site Recovery Manager suspends local virtual machines if the recovery plan requires this. |
| Effect on replication | Site Recovery Manager creates temporary snapshots of replicated storage at the recovery site. For array-based replication, Site Recovery Manager rescans the arrays to discover them. | During a planned migration, Site Recovery Manager synchronizes replicated datastores, then stops replication, then makes the target devices at the recovery site writable. During a disaster recovery, Site Recovery Manager attempts the same steps, but if they do not succeed, Site Recovery Manager ignores protected site errors. |
| Network | If you explicitly assign test networks, Site Recovery Manager connects recovered virtual machines to a test network. If virtual machine network assignment is Auto, Site Recovery Manager assigns virtual machines to temporary networks that are not connected to any physical network. | Site Recovery Manager connects recovered virtual machines to the user-specified datacenter network. |
| Interruption of recovery plan | You can cancel a test at any time. | You can cancel the recovery at any time. |
