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Table Of Contents
About Placeholder Virtual Machines 4
When you create an array-based replication protection group that contains datastore groups or a
vSphere Replication protection group that contains individual virtual machines, Site Recovery Manager
creates a placeholder virtual machine at the recovery site for each of the virtual machines in the protection
group.
A placeholder virtual machine is a subset of virtual machine files. Site Recovery Manager uses that subset of
files to register a virtual machine with vCenter Server on the recovery site.
The files of the placeholder virtual machines are very small, and do not represent full copies of the protected
virtual machines. The placeholder virtual machine does not have any disks attached to it. The placeholder
virtual machine reserves compute resources on the recovery site, and provides the location in the
vCenter Server inventory to which the protected virtual machine recovers when you run recovery.
The presence of placeholder virtual machines on the recovery site inventory provides a visual indication to
vCenter Server administrators that the virtual machines are protected by Site Recovery Manager. The
placeholders also indicate to vCenter Server administrators that the virtual machines can power on and start
consuming local resources when Site Recovery Manager runs tests or runs a recovery plan.
When you recover a protected virtual machine by testing or running a recovery plan,
Site Recovery Manager replaces the placeholder with the recovered virtual machine and powers it on
according to the settings of the recovery plan. After a recovery plan test finishes, Site Recovery Manager
restores the placeholders and powers off the recovered virtual machines as part of the cleanup process.
NOTE Site Recovery Manager does not create placeholder virtual machines for storage policy protection
groups. For information about how Site Recovery Manager places virtual machines on the recovery site
when you use storage policy protection groups, see “Inventory Mappings for Storage Policy Protection
Groups,” on page 34 and “About Storage Policy Mappings,” on page 39.
About Placeholder Virtual Machine Templates
When you protect a template on the protected site, Site Recovery Manager creates the placeholder template
by creating a virtual machine in the default resource pool of a compute resource and then by marking that
virtual machine as a template. Site Recovery Manager selects the compute resource from the set of available
compute resources in the datacenter on the recovery site to which the folder of the virtual machine on the
protected site is mapped. All the hosts in the selected compute resource must have access to at least one
placeholder datastore. At least one host in the compute resource must support the hardware version of the
protected virtual machine template.
VMware, Inc.
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