Disaster Recovery Scenarios in VCD with VMware Live Recovery

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Planning, Testing, and Automating DR in a Multi-Tenant Cloud Environment

Disaster Recovery (DR) has evolved beyond just backup and failover—modern enterprises need continuous availability, seamless testing, and tenant-specific control. With the integration of VMware Live Recovery into VMware Cloud Director (VCD), service providers can now offer multi-tenant DR-as-a-Service (DRaaS) that’s automated, reliable, and easy to test.

In this article, we’ll explore how Live Recovery and VCD work together to deliver powerful DR capabilities with real-world scenarios and test planning guidance.

What Is VMware Live Recovery?

VMware Live Recovery is the next-gen solution for disaster recovery orchestration and automation. It supports:

Replication and recovery workflows
Non-disruptive DR testing
vSphere and VCD integration
Support for multi-site recovery and policy-based protection

With VCD, Live Recovery becomes tenant-aware, enabling cloud providers to offer self-service DR portals to their clients.

Scenario 1: Tenant-Level DR Plan for Web Apps

Use Case:

A tenant hosts a 3-tier application (Web–App–DB) in OrgVDC A and wants to recover it to OrgVDC B.

Steps:

Define Protection Groups for the 3 VMs in VCD UI
Set RPO targets (e.g., 5 mins)
Create a Recovery Plan in Live Recovery:
- Start DB VM first, then App, then Web
- Attach specific NSX-T networks
Perform a non-disruptive test failover
Monitor results and logs in the VCD tenant portal

✅ Result: The tenant can test their DR plan without service impact and see the RPO/RTO metrics.

Scenario 2: Regional Datacenter Outage

A provider operates two VCD instances across Baku and Ganja. Live Recovery is configured between them.

Failover Plan includes:
- DNS update scripts
- NSX-T firewall pre-configuration
- IP customization policies
Once a disaster is declared, auto-orchestration moves workloads from Baku → Ganja within minutes.

✅ Fully automated DR with minimal manual intervention.