You can configure a recovery plan to run commands on Site Recovery Manager Server or on a virtual machine, display messages that require a response when the plan runs on the Site Recovery Manager Server or in the guest OS, suspend non-essential virtual machines during recovery, configure dependencies between virtual machines, customize virtual machine network settings, and change the recovery priority of protected virtual machines.

A simple recovery plan that specifies only a test network to which the recovered virtual machines connect and timeout values for waiting for virtual machines to power on and be customized can provide an effective way to test a Site Recovery Manager configuration. Most recovery plans require configuration for use in production. For example, a recovery plan for an emergency at the protected site might be different from a recovery plan for the planned migration of services from one site to another.

Note: A recovery plan always reflects the current state of the protection groups that it recovers. If any members of a protection group show a status other than OK, you must correct the problems before you can make any changes to the recovery plan. When a recovery plan is running, its state reflects the state of the recovery plan run, rather than the state of the protection groups that it contains.