Testing Failover Plans

Before you run a failover plan, you can use an isolated VAO virtual lab to test the entire plan, including verification of VM replicas and applications. All changes made to VM replicas during a lab session will be discarded when the lab is powered off.

VAO virtual labs are based on Veeam Backup & Replication virtual labs. While a Veeam Backup & Replication virtual lab is an appliance VM that creates an isolated network, VAO adds the capability to easily create multiple test environments using VM groups, perform full application verification including custom scripts, and generate detailed reporting.

Virtual labs may be powered on independently from failover plans, and used for other test cases (for example, to test patches or upgrades). You can add one or more failover plans to any running lab and verify the plans there. You can also choose to keep VM replicas running in the lab, so that additional tests can be performed.

To test a failover plan:

1. In Veeam Backup & Replication console, create a virtual lab that will be used to start VM replicas.

For more information, see the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide.

2. Enable the virtual lab for the required VAO site.

For more information, see Connecting Virtual Labs.

3. Create a virtual lab group to provide the test environment for the VM replicas to be verified.

Most VMs require a domain controller to boot and start services successfully. If the failover plan does not include a domain controller, then ensure that the virtual lab group includes a VM with the Domain Controller role. Otherwise, the VMs in the plan will fail to verify.

4. Start on-demand plan testing or configure test scheduling.

To ensure that failover plans are automatically and regularly verified, you can schedule the plan for automated virtual lab testing.

5. View plan test results.