Content Store for DR

[cogpunter]

Hi Gurus,

I am setting up a new environment for our client. We have 2 CMs, 2 dispatchers and one webserver on one location. This is our primary.
Now for the DR system, we have 2 CMs and 2 dispatchers and one webserver (exactly same as primary) but in a different environment.
For this setup, we have one primary database and one standby\disaster database for content and audit store . The standby\disaster database is setup on DR environment . So if cognos primary server is down, the database will route requests to secondary database immediately.
One of my concern is that we are investing too much on DR setup so I want to make sure that the same DR system can also be used as gamma\pre prod\full scale testing environment before we move any stuff to production. The hardware configuration is exactly same as primary.

Question to you guys is : Should we request for a new database for DR environment . If we get a new database, this will not be in sync with primary database.
I am bit confused on how we should proceed. Whats the best approach ? we already have 2 databases for Content store