Why is there no "Recovery Drill" option for a failed over instance?

Question

The reason I ask the question is that in the original setup - recovery into secondary region - the "Launch Settings" were configured with:

- Instance type right sizing:  Inactive
- EC2 Launch Template
      - Selected Required Subnet, Security and Instance Type

Then performed a "Initiate Recovery Drill" - and was able to verify that the instances were created in the right subnets, right type etc.

However when the instances were failed over ("Initiate Recovery") and sync'd back to original Primary region - the "Launch Settings" were not all retained.    I have applied the required settings (again?) as above - but now the option to "Initiate Recovery Drill" is grayed out - only "Launch For Failback" is showing.

As I have had to reconfigure the Launch Settings it would seem reasonable to be able to test these via the "Drill" - the option to only show "Failback" would be reasonable if the Launch settings had been retained, but they weren't.

Answer

The option to "Initiate Recovery Drill" is likely grayed out because the launch settings were not retained after failing over and syncing back to the original primary region. When the launch settings are changed, it invalidates any previous recovery drills that were configured.

A few things you can try:

Verify that the launch settings are configured exactly the same as they were before failing over. This includes things like instance type, subnet, security groups etc.

If the launch settings need to be reconfigured, you will need to create a new recovery drill configuration. On the AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery console, go to the source server details page and select "Create recovery drill" to set this up.

Check the AWS documentation for details on how recovery drills work and the impact of changing launch settings. The drills are tied to the specific launch configuration, so any changes would require recreating the drill setup.

Consider taking snapshots of the launch settings for future reference, so they can be restored if needed after making changes.

The option to only show "Launch for Failback" makes sense in this case, since the previous drill configuration is now invalid.

Why is there no "Recovery Drill" option for a failed over instance?

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