The cloud computing environment is an enhancement to the predecessor grid environment, whereby multiple grids and other computation resources may be further abstracted by a cloud layer, thus making disparate devices appear to an end-consumer as a single pool of seamless resources. These resources may include such things as physical or logical compute engines, servers and devices, device memory, and storage devices.
Currently, Disaster Recovery (DR) tests are relatively inefficient and cumbersome to perform. Along these lines, DR tests per service often fail DR threshold requirements such as service Recovery Time Objective (RTO), component RTO, data RTO, and Recovery Point Objective (RPO). As such, it is difficult to gauge the success rate of DR tests and DR performance during actual disasters. In general, DR exercises range from table top exercises, and in-lab partial recovery tests, to full scale DR site recovery tests. Currently, availability of DR tests that allow for automated third party recovery tests that focus on specific services and service components is very limited. Given the larger portfolio of Information Technology (IT) enabled business services that large enterprises have and their interdependencies, it is difficult and costly to run full scale DR drills on a periodic basis. Moreover, the portfolio of Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)/Web services (e.g., atomic composite, and clustered services) and their relationship to business services and business processes introduce more complexity to DR scenarios and exercises.