When to use planned vs unplanned ASR failover for azure vm?

Question

1. We are going to perform DR activity for production test. However, when I went for PS commands, there are two options: planned, unplanned. Which type should we use for our scenario?
2. Also, please add the document clarifying this if any.
3. If planned/unplanned failover has something to do with stopping VMs in advance, what duration in advance should we stop them?

Start-AzRecoveryServicesAsrUnplannedFailoverJob

Start-AzRecoveryServicesAsrPlannedFailoverJob

Answer 1

Hello,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A,

Planned and Unplanned failover in Azure Site Recovery (ASR) depends on whether the source site (i.e., your production environment) is still accessible and whether you’re initiating the failover proactively or in response to a failure.

Since you're doing a planned DR activity for production testing, you should use:

• Start-AzRecoveryServicesAsrPlannedFailoverJob

This is the recommended option for controlled DR drills or cutover scenarios.

A Planned Failover is used when you still have access to the source environment and initiate the failover in a controlled and intentional manner, such as for disaster recovery (DR) testing, planned DR drills, or migration. In this scenario, Azure expects you to gracefully shut down your source virtual machines (VMs) before triggering the failover. This ensures that all the latest data is replicated to the recovery site and no recent changes are lost. You would typically stop the VMs 15 to 30 minutes before starting the failover. The command used for this is:

Start-AzRecoveryServicesAsrPlannedFailoverJob

---

On the other hand, an Unplanned Failover is used when the source site is unavailable, such as during an unexpected outage, disaster, or network failure. Because the site is inaccessible, the VMs cannot be shut down properly, and Azure cannot perform a final data replication. As a result, you may lose any changes that occurred since the last successful replication cycle. This method is more abrupt and is typically used in true disaster recovery situations. The corresponding command is:

Start-AzRecoveryServicesAsrUnplannedFailoverJob

Please Upvote and accept the answer if it helps!!