Dell PowerStore Protecting Your Data

After you set up a replication session, you can test the connection to ensure that your sites are correctly configured and prepared for disaster recovery.

During a failover test, the system performs a failover and production access is provided to the destination site using replicated data or a point-in-time snapshot. The destination storage resource is available in read/write mode, and production access is enabled for hosts and applications. You can verify your disaster recovery configuration while replication continues to run in the background.

When you wish to stop the failover test, select one of the following actions:

• Failover to the current test data - If you made changes to the data during the failover test, you can use the updated test data. This will stop the test and preserve the test data. Any data replicated from the source during the test will be discarded and the destination system will become the source.
  NOTE:You must acknowledge these changes before failing over to the test data.
• Stop the failover test - When you stop the test, production access to the destination will be disabled for hosts and applications and the destination storage resource will be updated with the latest data synched from the source system. You can create a backup snapshot of the test data before stopping the failover test.

Restrictions

A failover test can only be performed under the following conditions:

• The PowerStore version on both the source and destination system is 2.x or later.
• The replication session state is not Initializing, Failing Over, Failed Over, Paused for NDU/Migration, or Failover Test in Progress.

During the failover test, you cannot execute the following actions on the destination system:

• Change volume group membership
• Increase volume group size
• Change volume group name
• Start migration
• Remove a protection policy

You cannot perform a planned failover while a failover test is in progress. Stop the failover test to perform a planned failover. However, unplanned failovers may still occur uninterrupted in response to a disaster. If possible, it is recommended to stop the failover test before an unplanned failover, because any data replicated to the destination after the failover test started will be lost.

You can also pause and resume replication sessions during a failover test. If you delete a replication session during a failover test, the test will be cancelled.

Start a failover test

You can start a failover test from the current destination data, or from any snapshot.

There are two ways to start a failover test:

• From Protection > Replication, select the replication session you want to test, then select Start Failover Test.
• From the Protection tab of the resource, select Replication, then select Start Failover Test.

After the failover test starts, an alert is raised on the replication session. The alert is cleared after the test is stopped.

Stop a failover test

Before you stop the failover test, it is recommended that you unmount file systems and stop any running applications on the destination resource to avoid data corruption.

There are two ways to stop a failover test:

• From Protection > Replication, select the replication session that has a test in progress, then select Stop Failover Test.
• From the Protection tab of the resource with a test in progress, select Replication, then select Stop Failover Test.

You can also choose to create a snapshot to save the test data that was created during the failover test.