SRM: How to manually configure an IP for each protected virtual for the TEST networks

[JDMils_Interact]

I have setup an SRM protection group and recovery plan for my protected virtual servers. The customer has asked for specific IPs to be assigned to the virtual servers when they are brought up in DR. Using the Recovery Plan, selecting the protected server and selecting the "Configure Recovery" option, I'm able to use the "IP Customisation" tab to set a specific IP for the NICs of the virtual server for the DR site/network. This is good.

Question 1: How do I setup the IP addresses for each virtual server for the TEST networks?

Question 2: I also read somewhere that when the protected virtual server is brought up in the TEST network, the virtual servers on the same hosts can only communicate to each other. So if half my virtual servers end up on HOST01 and the other half end up on HOST02, the 2 groups cannot communicate to each other- is this correct?

Question 3: With respect to DNS, do I have to failover a DNS server from the protected to recovery sites in order for DNS to work? I want to make sure that when I fail over the protected virtual servers, that their DNS names are not inserted into the protected site's DNS servers as this will cause havoc for the production servers.

Thanks.

[JoaquinC]

Hi

IP Customization is only going to happen during a planned recovery or disaster recovery, not during the test of a recovery plan.

During the test your protected VMs will not be powered off so you do not want to have your VMs running in two places even if they are using different IPs because there might causes other issues, so only during the test the VMs will be powered on in an isolated network

During a planned or disaster recovery your VMs will use the port group you picked during the protection of the VM and the ip customization will happen, and about your DNS if you do not have dynamic updates enabled you would need to manually update your records.

Best regards

[Cato Grace]

That is not correct  - IP customization will happen during planned migration, failover, and test. 

You are correct about using an isolated network for keeping your test VMs isolated. In the network mapping configuration, you can designate a test network. This test network can either be auto-generated by SRM (a virtual port group with no uplinks - this would mean that VMs wouldn't be able to communicate with VMs on other hosts, or other networks) or a designated network (I would recommend a duplicate of your production network, same routing and same firewall rules, configured so that this duplicate network is isolated from the rest of your environment.).