Azure Site Recovery - Questions about test failover

Question

Hi All,

I set up Azure Site Recovery for on-prem servers.
All servers are replicating fine.
My question is: if I run test failover on a machine and make some changes what will happen with those changes during replication and after failover?
Will those changes gone once failover is triggered or merge with the original server?
For example I replicate a domain controller from on-prem to the server.
Then I run test failover and in test failover VM say delete a user, an OU or even uninstall Active Directory Directory Services role.
What will happen:

• if a VM continue to run in test failover state (DC-SERVER-test)
• if I run cleanup test failover
• if I run failover

Thanks.

Answer 1

Hi @Cloud_Geek_82
Test failover:

• This will not bring down your production environment and recommended to perform in an isolated network to avoid conflicts.
• This will keep the replication going to cloud from your source (in your scenario On-Premise).
• If you make any changes in your test environment such as un-installing AD/Removing a user account - This will not impact (No reverse sync from cloud to On-prem) the source infra.
• Please remember you can make changes inside these test environment, but do not delete test cloud infra such as complete VM/disk/VNet - This will create issues while you execute cleanup.
• You can perform test failover and clean up as many times as you need.
• Important : I understand that Domain Controller test failover is just an example that you picked, but it is not recommended to perform a direct failover for a DC in multi forest/domain environment, there are few considerations that you need to follow - more details here

Reference Articles#
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-faq#failover
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-test-failover-to-azure#run-a-test-failover

Answer 2

A test failover is just that, for testing purposes to ensure your VMs failover successfully and that you can access them. Any changes you make here are not replicated* back to your live environment and will be lost once the cleanup is completed.

*Please make sure to run a test failover in an isolated virtual network, if you use a production virtual network that is connected to your on-premises environment then you will have conflicting VM names and in the case of Active Directory in particular you will encounter replication issues and may have irreversible consequences.

I would recommend reading through this article:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/site-recovery/site-recovery-test-failover-to-azure#test-failover-to-a-production-network-in-the-recovery-site