By performing a test failover you can validate that the data from the source site replicates correctly in the destination site.

You perform a test failover for a replication and then delete the test data.

Test Failover Workflow: Protected>Test>Failover Test Ready>Cleanup

Prerequisites

Before testing failover:
Important:
  • Verify that in the destination datastore, at least double the allocated storage of the virtual machine including RAM size, is available. For information about the storage requirements and examples, see Deployment Requirements in the VMware Cloud Director Availability Installation, Configuration, and Upgrade Guide in the Cloud then select your VMware Cloud Director Availability version.
  • Verify that in VMware Cloud Director, the VM discovery option is not activated. For information about deactivating virtual machine discovery, see Discovering and Adopting vApps in the VMware Cloud Director documentation.
  • Verify that the vApp or the virtual machine is protected in the destination site. For more information, see Create a Protection.
  • Verify that VMware Cloud Director Availability is deployed in both the source and in the destination sites.
  • Verify that you can access VMware Cloud Director Availability as a tenant or as a service provider. For more information, see Accessing VMware Cloud Director Availability.

Procedure

  1. In the left pane, choose a replication direction..
  2. Select the protected vApp or virtual machine to test the failover and click All actions > Test Failover.
  3. In the Test Failover wizard, configure the selected workload for the failover test.
    1. On the Recovery Settings page, configure the recovered workload and click Next.
      Option Description
      Power on recovered vApps

      Select to power on the virtual machines in the destination site after the task completes.
      Network settings
      • Select Apply preconfigured network settings on failover, to assign the network configured during the virtual machine replication.
      • Select Connect all VMs to network and from the drop-down menu select a network to connect the replicated virtual machines to.
    2. On the Recovery Instance page, configure the recovery point in time and click Next.
      Option Description
      Synchronize all VMs to their current state

      Creates an instance of the powered on workload with its latest changes and uses that instance for the test failover.
      Manually select existing instance

      Select an instance without synchronizing the data for the recovered workload.
    3. On the Ready To Complete page, review the test details and click Finish.
    In the Last changed column, you can monitor the progress of the test. After the test finishes, for the vApp and its virtual machines in the Recovery state column you see a Test image ready state.
  4. To delete the test failover results, select the replication to clean.
    1. Click All actions > Test Cleanup.
    2. In the Test Cleanup window, click Cleanup.
    The cleanup deletes all recovered vApps and virtual machines.

What to do next

  • You can fail over the workload to the destination site. For more information, see Perform a Failover Task.
  • You can perform a failover or edit the replication settings. If you no longer have to protect the workload, you can delete the replication to remove it from the vApp and virtual machine list.