HP StorageWorks Storage Mirroring Evaluation Guide (T2558-96326, April 2009)

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Testing your target data
At this point in your evaluation, you have completed a disaster recovery scenario. You may want to
test your target data. The type of testing you will need to perform will depend on the type of data
you are protecting.
 User data—If you are protecting user files, you can use the associated application to open the
files on the target. Open one or more of the files to test the integrity of the data. Do not save the
file after you have opened it, because that will update the copy of the data on the target, which
you do not want to do at this point in the evaluation.
 Application data—If you are protecting application data, for example a database application,
you will need to use that application to test the integrity of the data and the files. Use the following
instructions to test application data on the target.
1. In order to test the application data on the target, you will need to start the application on the
target. But Storage Mirroring requires applications to be in a standby mode in order to update
files on the target. In order to meet both of those requirements, you will need to pause the
target. When you pause the target, the source begins to queue the data changes that are
occurring. This will give you an opportunity to start the services on the target, test the data, stop
the services, and then resume the target. Make sure your mirror is Idle and then pause the
target by right-clicking the connection in the Management Console and selecting Pause Target.
2. Once the target is paused, you can start the application services on the target. Test the
application data by using clients to connect to the application. For this evaluation, the clients will
need to be configured to access the application from the target. In a real-world scenario, if
failover has occurred, the target would be standing in for the source and the clients would still be
accessing the application from the source.
3. After you have completed your testing, stop the application services on the target.
4. After the application services on the target have been stopped, you can resume your taget
through the Management Console by right-clicking the connection and selecting Resume
Target.
5. While you were testing the application on the target, the application files were updated on the
target, thus your source and target are no longer synchronized. You will need to perform a
manual remirror to resynchronize the files on the source and targer. Right-click the connection
and select Mirroring, Start. Select a File Differences mirror. Make sure that Send data only
if Source is newer than Target is not selected. Since your target files are actually newer than
the source (because of the testing you performed), you do want the newer files on the target to
be overwritten by the files from the source. Click OK to begin the mirror.
When the mirror is complete, your source and target will again be synchronized and you can continue
with your evaluation.
NOTE: Because of name limitations, the Microsoft Exchange Information Store service is the
only Exchange service that can be started on the target without having failed over
without causing problems. Therefore, the variety of Exchange tests that can be
performed on the target server is limited.