About Fire Drill Wizard operations in a Hitachi TrueCopy or EMC SRDF environment

Last published : Aug 05, 2026
The Fire Drill Wizard performs the following basic operations in all replication environments:
  • Prepares for the fire drill by creating a fire drill service group on the secondary site
  • Runs the fire drill by bringing the fire drill service group online on the secondary site
  • Restores the fire drill configuration by taking the fire drill service group offline
  • Deletes the fire drill service group and any associated registry entries
See About the Fire Drill Wizard.
In Hitachi TrueCopy or EMC SRDF replication environments, the Fire Drill Wizard performs the following additional actions during preparation, running of the fire drill, restoring the configuration, and deleting the configuration. You must configure the ShadowImage (for Hitachi) or BCV (for SRDF) pairs before running the wizard.
About preparing the fire drill configuration
When preparing the fire drill configuration, the wizard does the following:
  • In the fire drill service group, the wizard creates HTCSnap or SRDFSnap resources for each HTC and SRDF resource in the application service group. It links the fire drill service group to the corresponding application service group.
  • In an HTC or SRDF environment, the wizard configures the Snap resource and sets the following attributes to the value 1, which indicates:
    • UseSnapshot: Take a local snapshot of the target array.
    • RequireSnapshot: Require a successful snapshot for the Snap resource to come online.
    • MountSnapshot: Use the snapshot to bring the fire drill service group online.
  • In an EMC SRDF environment, the wizard sets the following attribute values:
    • It sets CopyMode to one of the following, which indicates:
      • Mirror: Use the TimeFinder Mirror technology to create snapshots.
      • Clone: Use the TimeFinder Clone technology to create snapshots.
      • Snap: Use the TimeFinder Snap technology to create snapshots.
    • When the TimeFinder Clone technology is used, it sets UseTgt to one of the following, which indicates:
      • 0: Use BCV devices to create snapshots.
      • 1: Use STD devices to create snapshots.
    • When the TimeFinder Snap technology is used, if a custom save pool area name is specified, it sets SavePoolName accordingly. The specified save pool area is used to create snapshots.
If no value is specified on the SRDFSnap Resource Configuration panel, the default save pool area is used.
For information about the actual procedure:
See Preparing the fire drill configuration.
About running the fire drill
When running the fire drill, the wizard brings the HTCSnap or SRDFSnap agent online. The HTCSnap or SRDFSnap agent manage the replication and mirroring functionality according to the attribute settings. The Snap agents take a consistent snapshot of the replicating data using the snapshot or mirroring technology provided by the array vendor. The Snap agents also import the disk group present on the snapshot devices with a different name.
In more detail, the Snap agent does the following:
  • Suspends replication to get a consistent snapshot
  • For HTCSnap, takes a snapshot of the replicating application data on a ShadowImage device
  • For SRDFSnap, takes a snapshot of the replicating application data on a BCV, STD, or VDEV device
  • Resumes replication
  • Modifies the disk group name in the snapshot
For information about the actual procedure:
See Running a fire drill.
About restoring the fire drill configuration
When restoring the fire drill configuration to a prepared state, the wizard takes the fire drill service group offline, thereby taking the SRDF and HTC Snap agents offline.
This action reattaches the hardware mirrors to the replicating secondary devices and resynchronizes them.
For information about the actual procedure:
See Restoring the fire drill system to a prepared state.
About deleting the fire drill configuration
When deleting the fire drill configuration, the wizard does the following:
  • Delinks the fire drill service group from the corresponding application service group.
  • Deletes the fire drill service group
  • Deletes any associated registry entries
If you want to remove the hardware mirrors, you must do so manually.
For information about the actual procedure:
See Deleting the fire drill configuration.
For more information about the Hitachi TrueCopy Snap agent functions, see Cluster Server Hardware Replication Agent for Hitachi TrueCopy Configuration Guide.
For more information about the EMC SRDF Snap agent functions, see Cluster Server Hardware Replication Agent for EMC SRDF Configuration Guide.
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