Sanity Check on process

[Rumple]

We have 6 sites where they have 2 independent ESX hosts with local storage only. Currently I have on ESX1 the production VM and on ESX2..as expected the replica.
Obviously failover to the secondary (say when we need to patch the ESX01 host) is simple..we do the permanent failover, patch the host.
The problem is I then need to redo the Replication job to go from replica back to Primary (and optionally the backup if I needed to stay on the Replica for any length of time), do the failover again and then re-edit the job the 3rd time to resetup the reverse replication again.

Is there a better way to do this that I just haven't realized?

[Egor Yakovlev]

Hi Mark.
Don't do Permanent failover? You can run Failover, patch the source host, then run Failback.
That should do the trick.
/Cheers!

[Rumple]

I always though fail back just reverted the changes that were made on the replica during the failover and then powered on the original source.

Unfortunately this is a live monitoring system so I can't lose any of the data gathered during the time I am failed over.

[Egor Yakovlev]

Undo Failover reverts changes back(deletes changes on replica VM, shuts down replica VM), whereas Failback process preserves everything changed on replica and transfers it back to source. Note, that after Failback, you also need to Commit Failback to set source Esxi as permanent machine home.
/Thanks!