When you run a recovery plan, VMware Site Recovery migrates all virtual machines in the recovery plan to the recovery site. VMware Site Recovery attempts to shut down the corresponding virtual machines on the protected site.

Caution: Running a recovery plan makes significant alterations in the configurations of the protected and recovery sites and it stops replication. Do not run any recovery plan that you have not tested. Reversing these changes might cost significant time and effort and can result in prolonged service downtime.

Prerequisites

  • To use forced recovery, you must first enable this function. You enable forced recovery by enabling the recovery.forceRecovery setting as described in Change Recovery Settings.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, click Site Recovery > Open Site Recovery.
  2. On the Site Recovery home tab, select a site pair and click View Details.
  3. Select the Recovery Plans tab, right-click a recovery plan, and select Run.
    You can also run the recovery plan by clicking the Run icon in the Recovery Steps view of the recovery plan.
  4. Review the information in the confirmation prompt, and select I understand that this process will permanently alter the virtual machines and infrastructure of both the protected and recovery datacenters.
  5. Select the type of recovery to run.
    Option Description
    Planned Migration Recovers virtual machines to the recovery site when both sites are running. If errors occur on the protected site during a planned migration, the planned migration operation fails.
    Disaster Recovery Recovers virtual machines to the recovery site if the protected site experiences a problem. If errors occur on the protected site during a disaster recovery, the disaster recovery continues and does not fail.
  6. (Optional) Select the Forced Recovery - recovery site operations only check box.
    This option is available if you enabled the forced recovery function and you selected Disaster Recovery.
  7. Click Next.
  8. Review the recovery information and click Finish.
  9. Click the recovery plan and click Recovery Steps.
    The Recovery Steps tab displays the progress of individual steps. The Recent Tasks area reports the progress of the overall plan.