Automated Failover Testing with the Zerto Orchestrator

One of the key procedures necessary to validate your DR/BC plan is testing the plan in a controlled environment to ensure that in the event of a real disaster the failovers of critical virtual machines and their applications will be successful.

Zerto provides documentation outlining how to test your DR/BC plan using various strategies, dependent on the level of testing you require. For details, refer to Live DR Testing (vSphere) or Live DR Testing (Hyper-V).

After an initial test has been successfully run, you need to repeat this testing on a regular basis to ensure that changes to the protected virtual machines and the environment have not adversely affected the ability to failover.

Zerto provides an automated testing tool so that the periodic tests are performed when and how you want them, with minimal manual intervention.

The Zerto Orchestrator is a pre-packaged Debian Linux virtual machine that contains the Jenkins build scheduling system and Python scripts that communicate with the Zerto Virtual Manager and vCenter Server using public APIs.

Using Jenkins to schedule tests instead of builds, the Zerto Orchestrator is tailored to automatically perform scheduled failover tests in Zerto, verifying success for each test. The test results can be audited and the administrator notified if a test fails.

Because the Zerto Orchestrator uses open-source tools, you can customize it to your specific testing requirements.

The Zerto Orchestrator can be used on any version of Zerto Virtual Manager from version 3.5.

See the following sections:

•

Installation and Initial Setup of the Zerto Orchestrator

•

Configuring Zerto Orchestrator