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Hi Commvault gurus!

 

I have the following question. We need to test disaster recovery situation when loosing all infrastructure and having only tape backup available. Then, which option we should choose in CommServe Recovery Assistant - staging or recovery? As said, we just want to simulate disaster recovery situation and try to restore CommServe and couple of client in order to be prepared for such situation.

What is the difference between Staging and Recovery option? I know, that when using Staging, all Backup activity is disabled, but of course it could be changed manually, couldn’t be?

Is there any other pitfall, we should keep in mind? Or any other best practice guidelines supporting following:

https://documentation.commvault.com/v11/expert/testing_commserve_failover_using_disaster_recovery_dr_backups.html - it is fine study material, but let’s consider we lost all infrastructure, we have just only the tapes with backups :D

https://documentation.commvault.com/v11/expert/testing_commserve_failover_using_disaster_recovery_dr_backups.html - is it safe to choose Recovery in CS Recovery Assistant, if it is only test disaster recovery?

 

drPhil,

Staging - After recovery, the tool automatically performs post staging operations on the CommServe database, so that the CommServe host is not reachable to any clients or MediaAgents in the CommCell group. Also, all schedules are disabled after the restore.

Recovery - The commserve will be fully functional.

Depending on the type of DR test you are doing you will either follow the steps in the link that you provided as this will enable a small group of clients or use the Recovery option to have the Commserve fully functional.

Reqards,

Edward J Holowienka.

Hi there,

 

since there has been no response, I would like to answer the question myself. In my opinion, if you are about to perform a DR test recovery, you should choose the recovery option in the CommServe Recovery Assistant tool because you'll need Commvault to be ready for some restores. However, keep in mind that your production and primary backup infrastructure must remain intact after performing DR tests.

Therefore, immediately after restoring with the CS Recovery Assistant tool, you should disable Data Aging, disable the Scheduler (you can queue all jobs), and if possible, disable Data Management and Auxiliary Copies. If you're restoring using tapes, you can mark the drives as Read Only.

Last but not least, best practice is to have the entire DR test environment in a completely isolated network to ensure that nothing in the production environment is affected when the DR test servers boot up. Additionally, the tape library in the production environment should be put in an offline state during the test.

 

Cheers

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