Preparing for Failover
After installing the AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery Agent on your Source Servers, we recommend validating your Source Server settings and testing (drilling) frequently in preperation of a failover event. Configuration of the recovery environment includes DRS Launch Settings, EC2 Launch Template, and Post-Launch Actions.
Valid and up-to-date configuration and drilling facilitates lowering the RTO.
Validate Launch Settings
After successful installation, we recommend validating your individual Source Server Settings to ensure they meet your recovery requirements. These settings can even be modified during the Initial Sync phase.
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DRS Launch Settings |
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EC2 Launch Template |
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Post Launch Actions |
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Recovery Drill Overview
A Recovery Drill is a synthetic failover that performs all the same steps as an actual failover. Recovery Drills run with the same Source Server Launch Settings and Point in Time snapshots that a Recovery would. As a result, we recommend adjusting any Source Server Launch Settings to isolate Drill Instances when necessary to avoid production or business impact. You can use verification post-launch actions when performing a drill to ensure that Launch Settings are accurate. A Recovery Drill can be performed with an individual source server, or it can include as many source servers as necessary to simulate the recovery of an application.
Recovery Drills will create EC2 resources in your Target AWS Account upon completion; these resources will be billed by the respective service until deleted. Recovery Drill EC2 resources will automatically be cleaned up if a Recovery Drill is performed again with the same Source Server.
Recovery Drill Objectives
Performing a Recovery Drill will assist in ensuring DRS can fulfill your Recovery Objectives during a failover event. Some Recovery Objectives can include:
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Ensuring Recovery Instances obtain Healthy System and Instance Status Checks.
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Ensuring all components in an application can communicate with one another.
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Ensuring users can interact successfully with the application.
Frequent and successful Recovery Drills will ensure your team can meet RTO/RPO goals during a failover event. We recommend performing drill on at least a quarterly basis; individual compliance needs may necessitate more frequent drills.
Performing Recovery Drills
Once a Source Server has reached Healthy, a recovery drill can be performed. Recovery Drills should also be performed whenever the last recovery result was not Successful, or it has been a significant amount of time since a Successful Recovery Drill has been performed.
As long as Initial Sync has completed, a Recovery Drill can be performed, even if a Source Server is in Lag or Stall status.
Post Recovery Drill Actions
Once a Recovery Drill has been successfully completed, we recommend cleaning up the recovery environment. Leaving Recovery Drill resources running may result in increased AWS charges. We recommend cleaning up your environment via AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery to ensure all resources created during the drill are removed.
