You can adjust default values for timeouts that occur when you test or run a recovery plan. You might adjust default values if tasks fail to finish because of timeouts.

Several types of timeouts can occur during recovery plan steps. These timeouts cause the plan to pause for a specified interval to give the step time to finish.

Site Recovery Manager applies some advanced settings to a virtual machine when you configure protection on that virtual machine:

  • recovery.autoDeployGuestAlias
  • recovery.defaultPriority
  • recovery.powerOnTimeout
  • recovery.powerOnDelay
  • recovery.customizationShutdownTimeout
  • recovery.customizationTimeout
  • recovery.skipGuestShutdown
  • recovery.powerOffTimeout

Site Recovery Manager keeps a copy of virtual machine recovery settings on each Site Recovery Manager site. If recovery advanced settings are different on the protection and recovery sites,Site Recovery Manager initializes recovery settings for a virtual machine to different values at each site . When Site Recovery Manager recovers the virtual machine from site A to site B, it applies the local recovery settings for site B. When recovering from site B to site A, Site Recovery Manager applies the local recovery settings for site A. This condition exists until you explicitly edit and save individual virtual machine recovery settings from the recovery plan Virtual Machines tab. Recovery settings for the affected virtual machine synchronize and become identical on both Site Recovery Manager sites.

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. In the left pane click Configure > Advanced Settings > Recovery.
  4. Select a site and click Edit to modify the recovery site settings.
    Option Action

    Activate or deactivate the automatic configuration of guest user mappings. This option is available only for VMs that use a compatible version of VMware Tools. The default value is true.

    For information about the compatible versions of VMware Tools, see Compatibility Matrices for Site Recovery Manager 8.5.

    Select the value of recovery.autoDeployGuestAlias to activate or deactivate the automatic configuration of guest user mappings.

    If the value is true, Site Recovery Manager creates guest user mappings in the guest OS of all VMs during the recovery and removes them when the recovery finishes. To use this option, you must install a compatible version of VMware Tools and must configure the IP customization or in-guest callout operations on the VMs that you want to recover. Before you run the recovery process, you must ensure the time synchronization between the ESXi hosts and the vCenter Single Sign-On server on the recovery site.

    If the value is false, you must manually map the local Site Recovery Manager solution user on the recovery site to a guest user account on the protected VM. The guest OS user must have permissions to run commands and access to files in the gust OS. If you configure an IP customization or in-guest callout operations, you must ensure the time synchronization between the guest OS of the protected VM and the vCenter Single Sign-On servers on the recovery site.

    If your Site Recovery Manager sites are in enhanced linked mode, you can use vSphere Web Client to configure the guest user mappings.

    For information about how to configure guest user mappings, see the Configuring User Mappings on Guest Operating Systems chapter in the VMware vSphere ESXi and vCenter Server documentation.

    If your Site Recovery Manager sites are not in enhanced linked mode, you must use a vSphere API to configure the guest user mappings and to ensure that the alias certificate is mapped. The best practice is to use the signing certificates of the vCenter Single Sign-On server. For information about the vSphere API, see the VMware vSphere API Reference documentation.

    Change the virtual machine power off timeout in IP customization. The default value is 300 seconds. Enter a new value in the recovery.customizationShutdownTimeout text box. This value is the minimal virtual machine power off timeout in seconds used in IP customization workflow only. If you specify power off timeout in virtual machine recovery settings, the greater value of the two takes precedence.
    Change the IP customization timeout. The default value is 600 seconds. Enter a new value in the recovery.customizationTimeout text box. This value is the timeout used in preparation of IP customization scripts on the Site Recovery Manager Server. You rarely need to change this value.
    Change the default priority for recovering a virtual machine. The default value is 3. Enter a new value in the recovery.defaultPriority text box.
    Activate or deactivate forced recovery. The default value is false. Select or deselect the recovery.forceRecovery check box. Activate forced recovery in cases where a lack of connectivity to the protected site severely affects RTO. This setting only removes the restriction to select forced recovery when running a recovery plan. To actually activate forced recovery, select it when you run a plan.
    Change the timeout for hosts in a cluster to power on. The default value is 1200 seconds. Enter a new value in the recovery.hostPowerOnTimeout text box.
    Change the default timeout value to wait for guest shutdown to complete before powering off VMs. The default value is 300 seconds. Enter a new value in the recovery.powerOffTimeout text box. This value defines the guest operating system timeout before power-off is attempted as a last resort to shutting down the virtual machines.
    Note: The virtual machines power off when the timeout expires. If the OS of the virtual machine has not completed its shutdown tasks when the timeout expires, data loss might result. For a large virtual machine that requires a longer time to shut down gracefully, set the guest OS power-off timeout individually for that virtual machine as described in Configure Virtual Machine Startup and Shutdown Options.
    Change the delay after powering on a virtual machine before starting dependent tasks. The default value is 0. Enter a new value in the recovery.powerOnDelay text box. The new value applies to power-on tasks for virtual machines at the recovery site.
    Change the timeout to wait for VMware Tools when powering on virtual machines. The default value is 300 seconds. Enter a new value in the recovery.powerOnTimeout text box. The new power-on value applies to power-on tasks for virtual machines at the recovery site. If protected virtual machines do not have VMware Tools installed, set this value to 0 to skip waiting for VMware Tools when powering on those VMs and avoid a timeout error in SRM.
    Activate or deactivate skipping the shutdown of the guest OS. The default value is false. Select or deselect the recovery.skipGuestShutdown check box.

    If skipGuestShutdown=true, Site Recovery Manager does not attempt guest OS shutdown on protection site VMs, but directly powers them off instead. In this case, the value set for recovery.powerOffTimeout has no effect together with this setting. If VMware Tools are not installed in the virtual machine, enable this setting to avoid a guest OS shutdown error in Site Recovery Manager.

    You can also activate the option to directly power off virtual machines without a shutdown timeout, bypassing the guest OS. See Configure Virtual Machine Startup and Shutdown Options.

    Activate or deactivate automatic VM IP customization during recovery. The default value is true. Select or deselect the recovery.useIpMapperAutomatically check box. If you select the option and IP mapping rules are configured for virtual networks, then Site Recovery Manager evaluates these rules during recovery to customize the VMs. If you deselect the option, the IP mapping rules are not evaluated during recovery. You can override the option for each VM in VM Recovery Settings IP Customization mode.
  5. Click OK to save your changes.

What to do next

To apply the changes to virtual machines that you have previously protected, you must reconfigure those virtual machines. For example, if you reconfigure the defaultPriority setting, you can manually reconfigure the priority of a previously protected virtual machine to match the new defaultPriority setting. You can apply changes from either Recovery Plans or from Protection Groups.

See Apply Recovery Settings to Virtual Machines in a Recovery Plan and Apply Recovery Settings to Virtual Machines in a Protection Group.