Failback

Failback is the process of restoring VMs and vApps from replicated storage back to a pool on your primary (production) site when the primary site comes back up after a disaster event. To fail back VMs and vApps to your primary site, use the Disaster Recovery wizard.

Important: The Disaster Recovery wizard does not control any storage array functionality. Duplication (mirroring) of the metadata storage and the storage used by the VMs which are to be restored must be turned off before you attempt failback to your primary site.

To fail back VMs and vApps to your primary site:

1. In XenCenter, select the target pool on your primary site, and on the Pool menu, click Disaster Recovery to open the Disaster Recovery wizard.

2. Select Failback and then click Next.

   Note: If you use Fibre Channel shared storage with LUN mirroring to replicate the data on the DR site, before you attempt to recover data, mirroring must be broken so that the primary site has Read/Write access.

3. Select the storage repositories (SRs) containing the pool metadata for the VMs and vApps that you want to restore back to your primary site. By default, the list on this wizard page shows all SRs that are currently attached within the pool. To scan for more SRs, choose Find Storage Repositories and then select the storage type to scan for:
   • To scan for all the available Hardware HBA SRs, select Find Hardware HBA SRs.
   • To scan for software iSCSI SRs, select Find Software iSCSI SRs and then enter the target host, IQN and LUN details in the dialog box.

   When you have selected the required SRs in the wizard, click Next to continue.

4. Select the VMs and vApps that you wish to restore and choose the appropriate Power state after recovery option to specify whether you want the wizard to start them up automatically as soon as they have been restored, or whether you prefer to wait and start them up manually yourself after failback is complete. Click Next to progress to the next wizard page and begin failback prechecks.
5. The wizard performs a number of pre-checks before starting failback, for example, to ensure that all the storage required by the selected VMs and vApps is available. If any storage is missing at this point, you can click Attach SR on this page to find and attach the relevant SR. Resolve any issues on the prechecks page, and then click Failback to begin the recovery process.
6. A progress page is displayed showing whether restoration was successful for each VM and vApp. Failback may take some time depending on the number of VMs and vApps you are restoring.
7. When the failback is complete, click Next to see the summary report. Click Finish on the summary report page to close the wizard.