Testing Replica (B&R 6.0 and later)

[foggy]

Hi Bernard,

1. Please see above for the replica testing procedure.
2. In case of re-IP, you'd need to adjust your DR network by modyfing DNS entries during a failover, so you can reach the servers with their new addresses.

[kevin_cambs_uk]

Afternoon, very simple question

We replicate a few VM's to our DR site.

We occasionally start these up just to ensure they work, but we never use them in live, as they are for DR, so they start up, we log in and just give a quick sense check then shut them down. What happens in terms of any writes to these machines , or is this not the best way to do this?

Thanks Folks

Kevin

[foggy]

Hi Kevin, all the changes performed while replica VM was up are discarded during the next job run.

[kevin_cambs_uk]

That great mate, much appreciated. Sorry for the double post I was not sure where the first one went!

[That guy]

I was wondering if I made changes to the OS of a replica (installing a program or update) would the next replication change all of that? Or would I have to roll back to a previous snapshot restore point to erase those changes?

Thanks

[DGrinev]

Hi,

No worries, all changes you made to replica VM will be discarded during the next job run.
Please review this thread for additional information. Thanks!

[sze]

I have a replication job.
Replica VM was powered on manually, and wrote to.
Can I continue with the existing replication job after shutting down replica VM manually?

[foggy]

Yes, the changes occurred while the replica VM has been on will be discarded.

[sze]

Ok. Good to know the replica can be used later. Thank you so much for helping!

post10941.html?hilit=replica%20testing#p10941
I read from this forum that
Testing replica with Veeam is really easy:
- Disable the Veeam replication job temporarily
- Use VMware Infrastructure Client to create snapshot on replica (so that VMDKs do not change during the testing, and you can continue replicating)
- Use VMware Infrastructure Client to edit replica VM configuration and change VLAN from production to test network
- Power on replica VM with VMware Infrastructure Client, and see if it can boot up properly
- Shutdown replica VM
- Use VMware Infrastructure Client to discard replica snapshot (to revert replica to original state, as before the testing)
- Enable the Veeam replication job back

Are these steps still valid & I can use these to test?

or

I just
- Disable the Veeam replication job temporarily
- manual power up the replica VM
- Use VMware Infrastructure Client to edit replica VM configuration and change VLAN from production to test network
- Power on replica VM with VMware Infrastructure Client, and see if it can boot up properly. Do all testing.
- Shutdown replica VM
- Enable the Veeam replication job back

Thanks again for your help & quick response.

[foggy]

The one referred to above is a bit old - you do not need to create a snapshot, since each replica restore point is already a snapshot. This is covered in the sticky FAQ, btw:

Q: I want to test replica failover. Can I simply power on any replica restore point with vSphere Client?
A: Yes you can, but we recommend to use “failover” / “undo failover” or SureReplica. Because each restore point is a snapshot, its content will remain intact, because all disk changes inflicted by the running VM will go into the new snapshot file that host automatically creates to protect the selected snapshot's state (standard VMware snapshot tree functionality). For the same reason, Veeam replication job will not be affected either.

[sze]

Hi foggy,

Thanks for your help!

[sunking2498]

Hi, I am using Veeam Replica’s in Veeam Backup & Replication to protect my production environment by replicating vSphere VM data to another site. I have a VPN connection between sites with layer 3 routing. I’m using the RE-IP function to give the VM replica’s an IP address on the DR subnet. I have an active DC & DNS server on the DR site which is part of the production Active Directory. My question is how to perform a DR test without affecting the production environment? I could perform failover in Veeam which would bring the VM replica’s online with different IP addresses and VM’s will update DNS with new IP addresses after the power on process. My concern is this will affect the production environment as there will be conflicting records in DNS with both prod & DR IP’s registered. I could take down the VPN between the production & DR sites during DR testing with Veeam Repica failover, however the concern again in this scenario is DNS. Once the VPN connection comes back up, DNS servers are going to replicate and create conflicting records. I’m interested to know what others are doing to mitigate these issues and to find out if there is a way to isolate the environment for DR testing to avoid these issues and still perform a functional DR test?

[foggy]

Hi Ian, please take a look at the SureReplica functionality. An alternative would be performing a failover with re-IP into some isolated network to not affect production.