---
title: "Running Failover"
description: "The Run action causes VMs in a plan to fail over to their replicas. For more information on the replica failover process, see the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide, section Failover. To run a replica plan: Navigate to Recovery Plans."
canonical: "https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vro/userguide/running_failover.html"
breadcrumb: "User Guide > Working with Recovery Plans > Working with Replica Plans > Running and Scheduling Replica Plans > Running Failover"
dateModified: "2026-08-26"
---

# Running Failover

The **Run** action causes VMs in a plan to fail over to their replicas. For more information on the replica failover process, see the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide, section [Failover](https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/userguide/failover.html?ver=13).

To run a replica plan:

1. Navigate to **Recovery Plans**.
2. Select the plan and click **Run**.
3. In the **Run Plan** window, do the following:

   1. For security purposes, retype your password and click **Next**. 

      You must also select the **Force-enable the plan** check box if you have not enabled the plan yet.

   2. From the **Type** drop-down list, choose whether you want to use a short-term or long-term restore point to recover VM replicas:

      - Short-term restore points are replicated states that are created with the shortest RPO (several seconds or minutes) and stored according to the short-term retention settings (no longer than several hours).
      - Long-term restore points are restore points that are created with a longer RPO (several hours) and stored according to the long-term retention settings (up to several days). Depending on the specified replication job settings, long-term restore points can be application-consistent and crash-consistent.

      For more information on replica retention policies, see the Veeam Backup & Replication User Guide, section [Creating Replication Jobs](https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/vbr/userguide/replication_job.html?ver=13).

   3. In the **Timestamp** field, choose a restore point that will be used to recover VM replicas.
   4. Set the **Malware actions** toggle to *Enabled* if you want to check VM restore points for malware flags.

      For more information on how Orchestrator performs malware scan, see [Overview](malware_scan_overview.md).

   5. Review configuration information and click **Run**.

::: tip

You can also scan a recovery plan for possible malware without running the plan. To do that, follow the instructions provided in section [Scanning Recovery Plans](scanning_recovery_plans.md).

:::

[![Running Failover](images/run_replica.png "Running Failover")](images/run_replica.png){.toggle scale=65}

The plan goal is to reach the *FAILOVER* state. If any critical error is encountered, the plan will stop with the *HALTED* state. To learn how to work with *HALTED* replica plans, see [Managing Halted Plans](managing_halted_replica_plans.md).