A Failover results in the business function of a failed workload being taken over by a failover workload within a PlateSpin Protect VM container.
PlateSpin Protect constantly monitors your protected workloads. If an attempt to monitor a workload fails for a predefined number of times, PlateSpin Protect generates a Tier row in Workload Protection Details).
event. Criteria that determine and log a workload failure are part of a workload protection’s Tier settings (see theIf notifications are configured along with SMTP settings, PlateSpin Protect simultaneously sends a notification e-mail to the specified recipients. See Setting Up Automatic E-Mail Notifications of Events and Reports.
If a workload failure is detected while the status of the replication is Aborting Commands), and then proceed to the command. See Performing a Failover.
, you can proceed to the command. If a workload fails while an incremental is underway, the job stalls. In this case, abort the command (seeThe following figure shows the PlateSpin Protect Web Interface’s Dashboard page upon detecting a workload failure. Note the applicable tasks in the Tasks and Events pane:
Figure 4-1 The Dashboard Page upon Workload Failure Detection (‘Workload Offline’)
Failover settings, including the failover workload’s network identity and LAN settings, are saved together with the workload’s protection details at configuration time. See the Failover row in Workload Protection Details.
You can use the following methods to perform a failover:
Select the required workload on the Workloads page and click
.Click the corresponding command hyperlink of the Figure 4-1.
event in the Tasks and Events pane. SeeRun a
command to boot the failover VM ahead of time You still have the option to cancel the failover (useful in staged failovers).Use one of these methods to start the failover process and select a recovery point to apply to the failover workload (see Recovery Points). Click and monitor the progress. Upon completion, the replication status of the workload should indicate .
For testing the failover workload or testing the failover process as part of a planned disaster recovery exercise, see Using the Test Failover Feature.
PlateSpin Protect provides you with the capability to test the failover functionality and the integrity of the failover workload. This is done by using the
command, which boots the failover workload in a restricted network environment for testing.When you execute the command, PlateSpin Protect applies the Test Failover Settings, as saved in the workload protection details, to the failover workload (see the Test Failover row in Workload Protection Details.
Define an appropriate time window for testing and make sure that there are no replications underway. The replication status of the workload must be
.On the Workloads page, select the required workload, click Recovery Points), and the click .
, select a recovery point (seeUpon completion, PlateSpin Protect generates a corresponding event and a task with a set of applicable commands:
Verify the integrity and business functionality of the failover workload. Use the VMware vSphere Client to access the failover workload in the VM container.
Mark the test as a
or a . Use the corresponding commands in the task ( , ). The selected action is saved in the history of events associated with the workload and is retrievable by reports. discards the task and the event.Upon completion of the
or tasks, PlateSpin Protect discards temporary settings that were applied to the failover workload, and the protection returns to its pre-test state.