To verify the failover configuration and infrastructure, a “test failover” operation can be performed to observe recovery of virtual machines and their data from the object store to a test recovery environment.
A test failover resembles an actual failover, with a couple key differences:
- The VMs will continue to operate in the protected environment, so there will be no interruption to their normal ongoing operation or protection.
- During testing, data is replicated across the system as it would happen with normal failover; however, ownership of the protected domain is never passed to the recovery site. Furthermore, the test VMs and data will be deleted from the system at the conclusion of the test.