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Disaster Recovery Guide › DR Site Operations › DR Site Testing

DR Site Testing

After software installation and tenant deployment completes, the DR site can be tested using the following procedure. You also use this procedure for any subsequent test periods that are required.

Follow these steps:

Before testing:

  1. Bring down all the servers at the DR site and take a snapshot, but omit the database.
  2. Prepare the database:
    1. Stop database replication.
    2. Put the standby Oracle database into standby snapshot mode. This mode sets a marker that enables reverting to this point in time and allows the standby database to be written.
    3. In case of Postgres, start the Standby without recovery mode
  3. On the Primary site, disable network connections to the DR site servers by removing the corresponding hosts from the host file on each system. If no host mappings exist, add host mappings for all DR site server hostnames so that they point to random unreachable IPs.
  4. Restart all DSAs on the Primary site Directory 2 (designated Hub for replication between sites). This action breaks the replication between the DSAs, which is needed for testing DR site.
  5. Start all the servers at the DR site.
  6. At the DR site, disable network connections to the DR site servers by removing the corresponding hosts from the host file on each system. If no host mappings exist, add host mappings for all of the Primary site server hostnames so that they point to random unreachable IPs.
  7. Restart all DSAs at the DR site Directory (designated Hub for replication between sites). This action breaks the replication between the DSAs, which is needed for testing DR site.
  8. Restart all the services on each of DR servers.
  9. Run the required tests.

    This step assumes that a DR Test tenant is already created. The hostname that is associated with this tenant maps permanently to the DR site. This situation is different from the normal tenant-associated hostnames that float between the primary site and DR sites as part of the failover and failback procedures.

    Note: If you are creating a tenant at the DR Site, the provisioning server needs to be running.

  10. After testing, stop the DR site servers in all tiers except for Oracle.
  11. Revert to snapshots.
  12. Prepare Oracle:
    1. Revert the database contents to the previously established marker by leaving standby snapshot mode. The database is now a normal standby database.
    2. Resume database replication.
  13. Start all the DR servers. Note, all the servers should still be in standby mode.
  14. On the Primary site, enable network connections to the DR site servers by adding the corresponding hosts from the host file on each system. If the hostnames are resolved from DNS server, you do not need to add host entries.

Note: To test either site when it is inactive, including prior to a failback, repeat this procedure. After testing is completed and normal operation is restored, sometime is required to re-synchronize the data tier between sites. The time required depends on the rate of data accumulation and the inter-site bandwidth. We recommend a very short test period to minimize recovery time.