Disaster Recovery Tests

Currently we use Log shipping between our active site and our DR site. The
question I have is when we do DR testing at the DR site to test
recoverability, we have to recover all those Log shipped databases which
means we are exposed until our DR tests are completed.
How does one go about ensuring we do not get exposed and continue to keep
data current and yet be able to test. Does that mean I have to log ship to 2
instances ? We have so many databases with TBs of storage and now I have to
double the storage and maintenance..
Anyways, are there other ways of doing so than Log shipping ?
We are on the SAN.When you say "exposed," what do you mean? What we do is we have DNS
settings that we manually change (IP address changes, that is) during DR
tests. This in itself will prevent anybody from accessing the production
servers, unless they know the server and instance names and access the
servers directly. After DR tests, we revert to the original IP addresses of
the production servers configured on our DNS settings.
"Hassan" <hassan@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23TgJzy4AIHA.5160@.TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
> Currently we use Log shipping between our active site and our DR site. The
> question I have is when we do DR testing at the DR site to test
> recoverability, we have to recover all those Log shipped databases which
> means we are exposed until our DR tests are completed.
> How does one go about ensuring we do not get exposed and continue to keep
> data current and yet be able to test. Does that mean I have to log ship to
> 2 instances ? We have so many databases with TBs of storage and now I have
> to double the storage and maintenance..
> Anyways, are there other ways of doing so than Log shipping ?
> We are on the SAN.
>|||I meant exposed at the DR site by not receiving logs and being current as
the log ship databases would be recovered for DR testing..
"bass_player [SBS-MVP]" <bass_player@.mvps.org> wrote in message
news:u7im1C7AIHA.4476@.TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
> When you say "exposed," what do you mean? What we do is we have DNS
> settings that we manually change (IP address changes, that is) during DR
> tests. This in itself will prevent anybody from accessing the production
> servers, unless they know the server and instance names and access the
> servers directly. After DR tests, we revert to the original IP addresses
> of the production servers configured on our DNS settings.
>
> "Hassan" <hassan@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
> news:%23TgJzy4AIHA.5160@.TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Currently we use Log shipping between our active site and our DR site.
>> The question I have is when we do DR testing at the DR site to test
>> recoverability, we have to recover all those Log shipped databases which
>> means we are exposed until our DR tests are completed.
>> How does one go about ensuring we do not get exposed and continue to keep
>> data current and yet be able to test. Does that mean I have to log ship
>> to 2 instances ? We have so many databases with TBs of storage and now I
>> have to double the storage and maintenance..
>> Anyways, are there other ways of doing so than Log shipping ?
>> We are on the SAN.
>|||Hassan
RESTORE DATABASE database_name WITH RECOVERY
"Hassan" <hassan@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:%23MvD1r7AIHA.2268@.TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
>I meant exposed at the DR site by not receiving logs and being current as
>the log ship databases would be recovered for DR testing..
> "bass_player [SBS-MVP]" <bass_player@.mvps.org> wrote in message
> news:u7im1C7AIHA.4476@.TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> When you say "exposed," what do you mean? What we do is we have DNS
>> settings that we manually change (IP address changes, that is) during DR
>> tests. This in itself will prevent anybody from accessing the production
>> servers, unless they know the server and instance names and access the
>> servers directly. After DR tests, we revert to the original IP addresses
>> of the production servers configured on our DNS settings.
>>
>> "Hassan" <hassan@.hotmail.com> wrote in message
>> news:%23TgJzy4AIHA.5160@.TK2MSFTNGP05.phx.gbl...
>> Currently we use Log shipping between our active site and our DR site.
>> The question I have is when we do DR testing at the DR site to test
>> recoverability, we have to recover all those Log shipped databases which
>> means we are exposed until our DR tests are completed.
>> How does one go about ensuring we do not get exposed and continue to
>> keep data current and yet be able to test. Does that mean I have to log
>> ship to 2 instances ? We have so many databases with TBs of storage and
>> now I have to double the storage and maintenance..
>> Anyways, are there other ways of doing so than Log shipping ?
>> We are on the SAN.
>>
>