What Should I Pay Attention to When Logging In to the Server After the First Time Ever I Executed a Switchover, Failover, or DR Drill?

Updated on 2024-05-07 GMT+08:00

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After you have performed a switchover, failover, or DR drill for the first time:

If your servers are installed with Cloud-Init/Cloudbase-Init, Cloud-Init/Cloudbase-Init will start along with the server's first startup to inject the initial data. In this case, the password or key pair used to log in to the production site server, disaster recovery site server, or drill server will change.
If your servers are not installed with Cloud-Init/Cloudbase-Init, the password or key pair used to log in to the production site server, disaster recovery site server, or drill server will not change.

The following uses a switchover or failover as the example operation. For the login constraints on drill servers, see those for DR site servers.

In the following example, Server A and server B are deployed. Table 1 shows the servers before and after the operation.

**Table 1** Servers before and after a switchover or failover
-	Production Site Server	Disaster Recovery Site Server
Before	Server A	Server B
After	Server B	Server A

Detailed login constraints are described as follows:

Scenario 1: Server A runs Windows and does not have Cloudbase-Init installed. After the first time switchover or failover:

If your servers use password for login, you can use the password of Server A to log in to the production site server (Server B) or disaster recovery site server (Server A).
If your servers use key pair for login, you can use the obtained password of Server A to log in to the production site server (Server B) or disaster recovery site server (Server A).

NOTE:

After the first time switchover or failover, the password or key pair remains the same for the subsequent switchovers or failovers. In this example:

You can use the password of Server A to log in to the production site server or disaster recovery site server.

Scenario 2: Server A runs Windows and already has Cloudbase-Init installed. After the first time switchover or failover:

When your servers use password for login,
If Cloudbase-Init is not started (normally within 3 to 5 minutes after the production site server starts), you can use the password of Server B for login.

After Cloudbase-Init is started, the login password of Server B becomes invalid. Reset the password and use the new password for login.
When your servers use key pair for login,
If Cloudbase-Init is not started (normally within 3 to 5 minutes after the production site server starts), you can use the obtained login password of Server B for login.

After Cloudbase-Init is started, the obtained login password of Server B becomes invalid. Obtain the password again.

NOTE:

After the first time switchover or failover, the password or key pair remains the same for the subsequent switchovers or failovers. In this example:

Scenario 3: Server A runs Linux. After the first time switchover or failover:

If your servers use password for login, you can use the password of Server A to log in to the production site server (Server B) or disaster recovery site server (Server A). Specifically:
If the login password of Server A is not changed before the operation, use this password for login.

If the login password of server A has been changed before the operation, use the new password for login.
NOTE:

For ECS OSs other than CoreOS, the login password does not change after the first time switchover or failover.

For ECSs running CoreOS, the login password of Server A will restore to the initial one after the first time switchover or failover. In this case, use the login password configured when Server A is created to log in to production site Server A or disaster recovery site Server B.
If your server uses key pair for login, use the SSH key pair of Server A to log in to production site Server B or disaster recovery site Server A.