In the previous post How to configure Azure Site Recovery, perform test failover and invoke disaster recovery failover – Part 2 – TechPress we have seen how to perform Test Failover using Azure Site Recovery. Also, we have seen how to clean up the test failover after verification of the application services on the server. We had noted down the RPO (Recovery Point Objective) and know how much time it takes to bring up the Server during DR (RTO).
If you are following along via the previous posts, you know that our primary site is UK South and disaster recovery site is UK West. During Outage in Primary Site, we will invoke the DR by clicking on Failover.
Lets see what happens when we start the Failover of the server tp-dc1. Click on Failover to initiate DR.
On the Next Screen, if you want to shutdown the source VM before starting the failover process. Select the “Shut-down machine before beginning failover” and proceed.
Notification Center shows that Failover is started
Monitor the Failover progress on the on the Site recovery Jobs Page:
Click on the Site Recovery Failover Jobs to find more details. As you can see the Failover is completed successfully.
We now have a new virtual machine created in UK West region which is our DR Site. As we selected the option to shutdown the source machine during the Failover process, it will be Stopped (deallocated).
When you go back to the Recovery Services vault -> Replicated Items -> Open the Protected Replicated Server, you will find the status now shows as Failover completed.
At this point you can change the Recovery Point of the server which you have failed over to DR site by clicking on Change recovery point. But once you have clicked on Commit then you will not be able to change to any other recovery point for your protected server(s).
As you can see that after you click on Change recovery point, I still have the option to go to any other recovery point.
Once you are logged on to the restored server in DR Site, verified the data consistency and happy with the test failover. You can commit the failover by clicking on Commit button. The Commit action deletes all the recovery points available with the service. The Change recovery point option will no longer be available. Click Commit and Click OK to proceed.
Failover has been committed. Change recovery point option has been greyed out.
Now the server tp-dc1 is running in UK West Region and not protected. The UK West region is our primary site now. Re-protect the server by replicating the server back to the UK South region and initiate failback which is similar to failover to UK South site and Re-protecting again or you can choose to keep the server active / running in the DR Site.
Go back to Recovery Services Vault -> Replicated Items 
-> Click on the Protected server -> Click on Re-protect. It will be the same way we had configured the replication from UK South to UK West. Using re-protect, you can replicate the server back to UK South and failback to the Primary Site / re-protect the server.
