Originating Author: Dave Vellante
Failing over to a backup site cannot be adequately tested because running production systems on a backup for test purposes poses substantial risks to companies. This is because if a problem occurs, failing back to the original production system can take days or worse, data could be permanently lost. As a result, most organizations perform inadequate DR testing whereby an historical copy of data (not the actual production system) is cut over to the backup site. While a proxy, it doesn’t account for a life-like disaster and is giving corporate boards a false sense of security. This is a big mistake and organizations should consider adding an asynchronous third node so that adequate testing can be performed. It sounds expensive, and it is, but it’s a lot less costly than going out of business.