System information

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Moving a protected disk to a different consistency group results in the same problems as for moving an
entire virtual machine. These problems occur if you move a disk to a different consistency group within
the same protection group or if you move it into a different protection group. Site Recovery Manager
does not prevent you from doing this, but if a disk has moved to a different consistency group,
powering on the virtual machine fails after the move.
Using Site Recovery Manager with vSphere Replication on Sites with Storage
DRS or Storage vMotion
You must follow the guidelines if you use vSphere Replication to protect virtual machines on sites that use
Storage DRS or Storage vMotion.
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vSphere Replication is compatible with vSphere Storage vMotion and vSphere Storage DRS on the
protected site. You can use Storage vMotion and Storage DRS to move the disk files of a virtual machine
that vSphere Replication protects, with no impact on replication.
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vSphere Replication is compatible with Storage vMotion and saves the state of a disk or virtual machine
when the home directory of a disk or virtual machine moves. Replication of the disk or virtual machine
continues normally after the move.
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A full sync causes Storage DRS to trigger Storage vMotion only if you set the Storage DRS rules to be
very aggressive, or if a large number of virtual machines perform a full sync at the same time. The
default I/O latency threshold for Storage DRS is 15ms. By default, Storage DRS performs loading
balancing operations every 8 hours. Storage DRS also waits until it has collected sufficient statistics
about the I/O load before it generates Storage vMotion recommendations. Consequently, a full sync
only affects Storage DRS recommendations if the full sync lasts for a long time and if, during that time,
the additional I/O that the full sync generates causes the latency to exceed the I/O latency threshold.
How Site Recovery Manager Interacts with vSphere High Availability
You can use Site Recovery Manager to protect virtual machines on which vSphere High Availability (HA) is
enabled.
HA protects virtual machines from ESXi host failures by restarting virtual machines from hosts that fail on
new hosts within the same site. Site Recovery Manager protects virtual machines against full site failures by
restarting the virtual machines at the recovery site. The key difference between HA and
Site Recovery Manager is that HA operates on individual virtual machines and restarts the virtual machines
automatically. Site Recovery Manager operates at the recovery plan level and requires a user to initiate a
recovery manually.
To transfer the HA settings for a virtual machine onto the recovery site, you must set the HA settings on the
placeholder virtual machine before performing recovery, at any time after you have configured the
protection of the virtual machine.
You can replicate HA virtual machines by using array-based replication or vSphere Replication. If HA
restarts a protected virtual on another host on the protected site, vSphere Replication will perform a full
sync after the virtual machine restarts.
Site Recovery Manager does not require HA as a prerequisite for protecting virtual machines. Similarly, HA
does not require Site Recovery Manager.
Site Recovery Manager Administration
94 VMware, Inc.