System information

Remove Protection from a Virtual Machine
You can temporarily remove protection from a replicated virtual machine without removing it from its
protection group.
Removing protection deletes the placeholder virtual machine on the recovery site. If you remove protection
from a virtual machine, the states of the virtual machine and the protection group are set to Not Configured.
Running a recovery plan that contains the protection group succeeds, but Site Recovery Manager does not
recover the virtual machines that are in the Not Configured state.
You might remove protection from a virtual machine for different reasons:
n
You use vSphere Replication and you want to reconfigure a protected virtual machine. You can remove
protection while you reconfigure the virtual machine, so that ongoing Site Recovery Manager test or
real recoveries are not affected by the changes. For example, if you add devices to a virtual machine and
run a recovery before you configure vSphere Replication on the new devices, the recovery shows errors
if you do not remove protection from the virtual machine.
n
You use array-based replication, and someone moves to a replicated datastore a virtual machine that
you do not want to protect. If you remove protection from the virtual machine, the protection group
still shows the Not Configured state, but test recovery and real recovery continue to succeed.
n
You use array-based replication and a virtual machine has devices that are stored on an unreplicated
datastore. You can remove protection from the virtual machine so that recoveries succeed for all of the
other virtual machines in the group while you relocate the device files.
n
In array-based replication, a distinction exists between the Site Recovery Manager protection of a
virtual machine and the Site Recovery Manager storage management for that virtual machine. If you
remove protection from a virtual machine, Site Recovery Manager no longer recovers the virtual
machine, but it continues to monitor and manage the storage of the virtual machine files.
Procedure
1 In the vSphere Web Client, click Site Recovery > Protection Groups.
2 Select a protection group and select Related Objects > Virtual Machines.
3 Right-click a virtual machine and select Remove Protection.
4 Click Yes to confirm the removal of protection from the virtual machine.
Protection Group Status Reference
You can monitor the status of a protection group and determine the operation that is allowed in each state.
Table 3‑1. Protection Group States
State Description
Loading Appears briefly while the interface is loading until the
protection group status appears.
OK Group is idle. All virtual machines are in OK state. You can
edit the group.
Not Configured Group is idle. Some virtual machines might not be in OK
state. You can edit the group.
Testing Group is used in a plan running a test. You cannot edit the
group.
Test Complete Group is used in a plan running a test. You cannot edit the
group. Group returns to the OK or Not Configured state
when cleanup is successful.
Site Recovery Manager Administration
38 VMware, Inc.