Patent ID: 8700946

Claim:
A data processing system for replication of a production data processing environment operated by a customer, the production environment including at least one production data processor and at least one production networking device, the system comprising: (a) a disaster virtual data center (VDC) including at least one dedicated live virtual machine (VM), at least one dedicated replication networking device, and one or more dormant VM definition for storing replicated data received from the production environment; (b) a test virtual data center (VDC) including provisions for allocating a networking and security device on demand from a pool of networking devices; (c) a failover process comprising: a replication process for receiving replicated data from the production system and writing the replicated data to the dormant VM in the disaster VDC, while the production system is in operation; a failure recovery process for activating the disaster VDC for access by the customer in place of the production system by promoting the dormant VM to a live VM when the production system fails; and (d) a testing process comprising: a sandbox test process for (i) moving or copying the first dormant VM from the disaster VDC to the dormant second VM in the test VDC; (ii) promoting the second dormant VM to a live VM within the test VDC; (iii) allocating a networking device on demand from a pool of networking devices reserved for sandbox testing; (iv) activating the test VDC for access by the replication service customer while the production system is still operating; and (v) releasing the networking device to the pool when the sandbox test process is finished.