Setup DR for SharePoint 2010 by simply move one server to DR site

Question

We are running SP2010 enterprise with 4 servers (APP1, APP2, WEB1, WEB2) and 1 SQL cluster.

In order to provide DR ability, we design to move one server (APP2, which is a VM instance) to DR data center. We will setup a new SQL server at DR site with the same version as production. Finally, we will backup all databases daily and restore to DR SQL server. The DR SQL server will be added to each configuration DB and content DB as "failover server".

In case of production site outage, we will:

1. Make sure APP2 is connecting to the DR SQL server (I assume SharePoint will auto change to failover server when production SQL is down?)
2. Turn on all service/service application on APP2.
3. Point all web request to APP2's IP.

Is it a possible plan?

P.S. We have considered several alternatives like setup mirroring, log ship, etc but they are banned due to technical restriction and budget.

Answer 1

Is it a possible plan?

Yes.

1. Make sure APP2 is connecting to the DR SQL server (I assume SharePoint will auto change to failover server when production SQL is down?)

As based on Microsoft's documentation:

Microsoft SQL Server database mirroring provides availability support by sending transactions directly from a principal database and server to a mirror database and server when the transaction log buffer for the principal database is written to disk. For availability within a Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 farm, you use high-availability database mirroring, also known as high-safety mode with automatic failover. High-availability database mirroring involves three server instances: a principal, a mirror, and a witness. The witness server enables SQL Server to automatically fail over from the principal server to the mirror server. Failover from the principal database to the mirror database typically takes several seconds.

For the next questions

2. Turn on all service/service application on APP2.
3. Point all web request to APP2's IP.

See the parts Service applications that store data outside a database and Service applications that store data in databases of Plan for availability (SharePoint Server 2010) to understand the possibilities for data losses and for which service applications such conditions apply. To summarize, the APP2's service applications should be able to automatically become the primary service applications after relevant timer jobs have ran on the virtual environment. Note, that SP2010's availablity documentation doesn't detail virtual environment cases directly, whereas SP2013's available documentation does. I don't see why the same wouldn't apply for 2010.