Overview

💡 Tip

For a deeper understanding of the failover process, see About disaster recovery failover.

Druva AWS proxy creates a DR copy for the virtual machine and maintains it in the AWS account. At the time of the disaster, you can launch EC2 instance from the DR copy, in-turn spinning up to production in minutes.

Druva allows you to configure virtual machines for failover with settings specific to the two modes, Production Failover and Test Failover, respectively. Depending, upon the type selected during failover, you can use the corresponding settings to launch the EC2 instance.

Druva allows you to configure failover settings specific to the DR plan as well as individual virtual machines in the DR plan. When you configure failover settings for a DR plan, the failover settings apply to all the virtual machines associated with the plan.

Before you begin

Before you configure VMs for failover ensure that:

The failover checks are clean. See, DR failover checks - Guest OS and DR failover checks - Environment.
You have reviewed the failover considerations. See, Failover considerations.

To access failover settings

Log in to the Management Console.
On the menu bar, click All Organizations, and select the required organization from the drop-down list.
On the menu bar, click Disaster Recovery.
In the left pane, click the DR Plans tab.
From the DR plan drop-down list, select a DR plan.
In the left navigation bar, click Virtual Machines, and select the VMs.
Click Change Failover settings.

Failover settings

Configure the following options for failover:

Option	Description
Instance Type	This is the type of EC2 instance that Druva creates in the AWS account when it performs recovery of the VMware virtual machine from the available DR copy. You can either select an instance type manually from the drop-down list or let Druva automatically assign an instance type based on the CPU, Memory, Region or Availability Zone, and Operating system version of the VMs selected in the DR plan. The Auto Assign option is selected by default. We recommend using the Auto Assign option. Manual selection: Clear the Auto Assign checkbox. Select an instance type from the drop-down next to Instance Type. Select an instance type that is the same size or larger than your source virtual machine. Automatic selection: Ensure that the Auto Assign checkbox is selected to let Druva automatically select instance types for the VMs. Click View recommendations to view instance types that will be assigned to each VM selected in the DR plan if you use the Auto Assign feature. If you do not want to assign the recommended EC2 instance, you can deselect the Auto Assign option and manually assign an appropriate instance type. 📝 Notes We've discontinued support for t2.micro and t2.small EC2 instance types for DR failovers. These instance types aren’t available for manual instance type selection or auto-assignment. If you've selected t2.micro or t2.small instance types in the failover settings for virtual machines in existing DR plans, you must change the instance type to t2.medium or higher. These instances will automatically be upgraded to t2.medium if you run a DR failover without changing the instance type manually. The Auto Assign feature currently does not consider storage specifications of the source machine such as NVMe. Druva caps the instance size to 24xlarge in situations where the vCPU of your virtual machine exceeds 96, or the memory exceeds 384 GB. Druva displays 24xlarge in the recommendations if this instance size is available in your AWS region. 📝 Note You must upgrade the VMware backup proxy to version 5.0.0 or later. The backup of all VMs selected in the DR plan should be successful after the VMware backup proxy upgrade. The Auto Assign functionality is disabled, and the View Recommendations link is unavailable if the backup of one or more selected VMs is not successful post the proxy upgrade. See, Failover Limitations for more information.
IAM Role	With the implementation of AWS PrivateLink (If you have deployed a Druva AWS proxy version 4.9.1-101573 or later), only the existing IAM roles will be displayed in the IAM Role drop-down. If you have created a new IAM role in your AWS account, you need to manually type the name of the IAM role which is the IAM instance profile ARL name. For more information, refer to the AWS documentation.
Volume Type	Select the required type of the Amazon EBS volume that you want to attach to the EC2 instance. Select one of the following options: Magnetic: These are standard volumes backed by the magnetic drives and used for workloads that are infrequently accessed. These volumes deliver approximately 100 IOPS on average. For more information, refer to the AWS documentation. General Purpose SSD: These are cost-effective storages that are used for a broad range of workloads. These volumes deliver approximately between 100 to 16,000 IOPS on average. For more information, refer to the AWS documentation. Provisioned IOPS SSD: These provisioned storages are used for I/O-intensive workloads such as database workloads. These volumes deliver approximately between 100 to 64,000 IOPS on average. For more information, refer to the AWS documentation. IOPS: Enter the input/output operations per second capacity for the volume. The IOPS box is displayed only if the Provisioned IOPS SSD option is selected as the volume type. 📝 Note Select the Provisioned IOPS SSD volume type only if the disk sizes are greater than 4 GB.
Instance Tags (Key-Value)	Enter a label in the key-value format and assign it to your AWS EC2 resources to categorize the AWS resources in different ways. Keys should not be name or conversion_id as these are used by Druva. For more information about tags, refer to the AWS documentation.
Security Groups	This is an optional field. Select one or more security groups from the groups available in the selected VPC. The security groups are used during the Production or Test failovers. 📝 Note The Security Group checkbox is disabled if the selected virtual machines belong to different VPCs. To change security groups of VMs belonging to different VPCs, filter the Virtual Machines listing by VPCs and change the security group settings in bulk. Alternatively, change the security groups one VM at a time. For more information, see Filter Virtual Machines.
Network Settings	These settings are available when you select a single VM and then select Change Failover Settings.
Subnet	The subnet settings are defined in Network Mappings.The subnet field is greyed out while changing the failover settings.
Public IP	Select one of the following: None:No public IP is assigned to the failover EC2 instance. Elastic:Elastic IP addresses are public IPV4 addresses that you allocate to your AWS account. Enter an available elastic IP address that can be assigned to your failover EC2 instance. Auto Assign:An available public IP address is automatically assigned to your failover EC2 instance. Your subnet should be a public subnet.
Private IP	Select one of the following: Static:Enter a static private IP address that is available within your subnet CIDR. This IP address is not reachable over the internet but enables communication between EC2 instances within the same VPC. Auto Assign:An available private IP address from your subnet CIDR is dynamically assigned to your failover EC2 instance. This IP address is not reachable over the internet but enables communication between EC2 instances within the same VPC.
Security Group	This is an optional field. Select one or more security groups from the groups available in the selected VPC. The security groups are used during the Production or Test failovers. 📝 Note The Security Group checkbox is disabled if the selected virtual machines belong to different VPCs. To change security groups of VMs belonging to different VPCs, filter the Virtual Machines listing by VPCs and change the security group settings in bulk. Alternatively, change the security groups one VM at a time. For more information, see Filter Virtual Machines.

Launch failover

Log in to the Management Console.

📝 Note Log into the EC2 instance using your domain or local administrator credentials.
On the menu bar, click All Organizations, and select the required organization from the drop-down list.
Click Disaster Recovery.
The Disaster Recovery page is displayed.
From the left navigation bar, you can select a DR plan from the Select DR plan dropdown list.
In the left navigation bar, on the Overview tab, click Failover.
Click one of the following failover options to open the respective failover page:
- Production Failover: Used to recover protected virtual machines to AWS in the event of an actual disaster. Production Failover ensures that the virtual environment is failed over successfully with minimal downtime during the disaster.
- Test Failover: Used to test that the virtual machines are recovered at the recovery site as expected. This operation creates virtual machines based on the preconfigured virtual machine failover settings specified in the DR plan.
  You must configure the test settings for the virtual machines to perform the test failover.
  On the respective Production Failover or the Test Failover page, the recovery workflow lists the steps created for the failover operation. Each step lists the virtual machines associated with the DR Plan.
  You must configure the test settings for the virtual machines to perform the test failover. For more information about how to configure settings, see Manage failover.
On the respective Production Failover or the Test Failover page, the recovery workflow lists the steps created for the failover operation. Each step lists the virtual machines associated with the DR Plan.

📝 Notes
- You cannot select a VM with UEFI firmware for failover if:
  - You have not upgraded the AWS proxy to version 6.3.1 or later
  - The source VM has a boot disk that is more than 2 TB of size or has more than 4 partitions in the boot disk.
- If the selected VM's firmware is UEFI, and if you have not upgraded your AWS and backup proxies to version 6.3.1 or later, then Failover EC2 Instance with BIOS firmware will be launched by performing appropriate modifications on the disks.
Click Failover.

The system displays the successful failover initiation message for the selected virtual machines. You can view the status of the failover request for the virtual machines on the Failover Instances tab. For more information about the various statuses of the failover, see View failover instances.

📝 Note
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) estimate is available only for virtual machines with DR copies created using the Druva AWS proxy version 4.8.0 or later.

About disaster recovery failover for VMware virtual machines

Create a DR plan

Manage disaster recovery plan

Manage virtual machines

Best Practices for Disaster Recovery as a Service