Perform a fault drill for ECS disaster recovery - Cloud Backup - Alibaba Cloud - Cloud Backup

Why perform a fault drill

A fault drill launches your protected servers in a test environment to verify that your applications function correctly. This test is a crucial part of your disaster recovery plan for two reasons:

It helps you verify that your protected applications will launch and run correctly at the disaster recovery site.
It allows your team to practice the recovery process, ensuring a smooth and confident failover during an actual disaster.

Prerequisites

The protection group must be in the Incremental Replication state or have at least one recovery point. To learn how to create a protection group, see Start replication for cross-zone disaster recovery and Start replication for cross-region disaster recovery.
If you plan to use the Create Custom Drill Environment method, you must first create the required VPC, vSwitch mappings, and security group mappings for the drill environment.

Procedure

Create a fault drill environment.

Note
For the Create Custom Drill Environment method, you must first create the required VPC, vSwitch mappings, and security group mappings. After you create the drill environment, you must configure its network settings.
Start the fault drill.
Verify your applications or services.
Clean up the drill environment.

Drill environment creation methods

Creation method

Use cases

Advantages

Disadvantages

Automatically Create and Start Drill Environment

Suitable for services that can be verified without connecting to the public internet or other networks.

Note

For example, an ECS application for internal use that does not require configurations for SLB, domain names, or security groups (open ports).

Simple configuration

After you specify a protection group, the system automatically creates the necessary drill resources, including a VPC and mappings for vSwitches and security groups.

You cannot customize the name prefix for the new ECS instances created during the drill. A custom prefix helps you quickly identify drill-related instances.

Create Custom Drill Environment

Suitable for services that require external network access for verification. The configured drill environment can be retained for future use.

Note

For example, if multiple ECS instances provide services through an SLB instance, you must configure the SLB instance, domain names, and security groups (open ports) for your services.

You can customize the name prefix for new ECS instances created during the drill to identify them easily.
You can plan and create your own drill environment resources. This includes manually creating a drill VPC or selecting a VPC at the disaster recovery site, and creating vSwitch and security group mappings.

Complex configuration

Requires you to specify a drill VPC and configure vSwitch and security group mappings, which can lead to IP address conflicts and drill failure.

Automatically create and start a fault drill

Log on to the Cloud Backup console.
In the navigation pane on the left, choose Disaster Recovery > ECS Disaster Recovery.
If your disaster recovery method is not EBS Async Replication, click Switch to EBS Async Replication.
On the Site Pairs page, click the target site pair, and then click the Fault Drill tab.

Note
You can also go to the Protection Group tab and start the fault drill in the Actions column.
Click Automatically Create and Start Drill Environment.
In the Start Drill dialog box, select a Protection Group and click Next.
Preview the protection group resources. After you confirm the details, click OK.
Note
- If the instance type or operating system at the disaster recovery site is not suitable, select a new one based on the specifications of the ECS instance at the production site and the on-screen prompts. You can click Change Instance Type and Modify Operating System to change the instance specifications at the disaster recovery site. If the instance type family and operating system cannot meet your needs, submit a ticket to contact Alibaba Cloud technical support.
- Before you start the drill, you can also click Modify User Data and Modify Disaster Recovery IP.
- An IP address conflict means the IP is already in use. To resolve this, remove the conflicting drill ECS instance or change the vSwitch mapping in your network configuration.
In the Confirm to Start Drill dialog box, click OK to start the drill.
Important
- The system temporarily pauses replication for the protection group to create new drill disks from the latest recovery point. Replication typically resumes automatically within five minutes. Once the drill disks are ready, the system creates drill ECS instances at the disaster recovery site. You can begin verifying your services after the drill group is successfully created.
- The drill process automatically starts the ECS instances at the disaster recovery site but does not stop the ECS instances at the production site. To prevent business risks, carefully evaluate your services and use tools such as security groups and network isolation to separate drill traffic from production traffic.
The drill protection group status changes from Initializing to Drill in Progress, and finally to Drill Group Created.
After the drill ECS instances start, verify your services.
Clean up the drill environment.
1. Delete the fault drill group.
  
  Deleting the fault drill group removes all drill resources, including ECS instances, disks, elastic network interfaces, snapshots, and images.
  
  In the Actions column of the target drill protection group, click Delete Fault Drill Group and confirm the action.
  
  Note
  You can also go to the Protection Group tab to delete one or more fault drill groups in the Actions column.
2. Delete the drill environment.
  
  In the Drill Environment section, click Delete and confirm the action.

Create a custom drill environment

Log on to the Cloud Backup console.
In the navigation pane on the left, choose Disaster Recovery > ECS Disaster Recovery.
If your disaster recovery method is not EBS Async Replication, click Switch to EBS Async Replication.
On the Site Pairs page, click the target site pair, and then click the Fault Drill tab.

Note
You can also go to the Protection Group tab and start the fault drill in the Actions column.
Click Create Custom Drill Environment.
In the Create Drill Environment dialog box, set a prefix for the new ECS instance names, select a Drill VPC, and then click OK.
Note
- The ECS instance prefix is added to the beginning of the name for each new instance created. For example, if the original instance name is ecse and you set the prefix to Drill_test_20230925_, the new drill instance name will be Drill_test_20230925_ecse.
- You must create the VPC for the drill environment at the disaster recovery site in advance.
Configure the network for the drill environment.
1. In the Drill Environment section, click Details next to Drill Network Configuration.
2. In the Drill Network Configuration dialog box, add vSwitch mappings and security group mappings.
In the Drill Environment section, click Start Drill.
In the Start Drill dialog box, select a Protection Group and click Next.
Preview the protection group resources. After you confirm the details, click OK.
Note
- If the instance type or operating system at the disaster recovery site is not suitable, select a new one based on the specifications of the ECS instance at the production site and the on-screen prompts. You can click Change Instance Type and Modify Operating System to change the instance specifications at the disaster recovery site. If the instance type family and operating system cannot meet your needs, submit a ticket to contact Alibaba Cloud technical support.
- Before you start the drill, you can also click Modify User Data and Modify Disaster Recovery IP.
- An IP address conflict means the IP is already in use. To resolve this, remove the conflicting drill ECS instance or change the vSwitch mapping in your network configuration.
In the Confirm to Start Drill dialog box, click OK to start the drill.
Important
- The system temporarily pauses replication for the protection group to create new drill disks from the latest recovery point. Replication typically resumes automatically within five minutes. Once the drill disks are ready, the system creates drill ECS instances at the disaster recovery site. You can begin verifying your services after the drill group is successfully created.
- The drill process automatically starts the ECS instances at the disaster recovery site but does not stop the ECS instances at the production site. To prevent business risks, carefully evaluate your services and use tools such as security groups and network isolation to separate drill traffic from production traffic.
The drill protection group status changes from Initializing to Drill in Progress, and finally to Drill Group Created.
After the drill ECS instances start, verify your services.
Clean up the drill environment.
1. Delete the fault drill group.
  
  Deleting the fault drill group removes all drill resources, including ECS instances, disks, elastic network interfaces, snapshots, and images.
  
  In the Actions column of the target drill protection group, click Delete Fault Drill Group and confirm the action.
  
  Note
  You can also go to the Protection Group tab to delete one or more fault drill groups in the Actions column.
2. Delete the drill environment.
  
  In the Drill Environment section, click Delete and confirm the action.