A Simulated disaster involves behaving as if there is an actual disaster when there isn’t really one. Only through running a full test of DR capabilities will users know what to do in the event of an actual disaster, allowing them to be prepared in what is to be a stressful situation.
A simulated disaster recovery test involves testing failover to the secondary site by simulating the unavailability of production by actually taking it offline, thus disconnecting users and networks from the production environment–making it seem as if it is not there. A failover test introduces a gap in services and simulates the experience of a disaster without a disaster.
It can be thought of as a sort of “live fire-drill,” acting as if there is a fire and carrying out the emergency response plan when there is not really an actual fire.In a simulated disaster, the primary data center is “made unavailable” and live equipment is running and functioning at a secondary site where users really are engaging with it. For instance, a failover test of a company’s email system would require disconnecting the primary site application, activating the secondary site application, and having users test its abilities by sending and receiving emails. This is all done live with the business. Failback occurs when there is a reactivating and reconnecting of users to the primary site. In this case, reactivating the primary email application and verifying that all the updated data was transferred back is a successful failback test. It is a simulated disaster because for all intents and purposes it seems as if the primary email system was “lost” when a user logs on to check email, but in reality the production email system is fine, it has just been disconnected. Delays in email access result, signaling the transfer of processing between the primary and recovery sites (which is measured against the Recovery Time Objective or RTO).
It is important to run a full-scale simulated disaster test at regular intervals to check that the plan delivers as expected. Failing over, as expected, in a simulated disaster scenario with live users and recovery technology, is excellent preparation for an organization – confirming it can handle an actual disaster recovery situation.
