5.5

Table Of Contents
For information about the loads that a vSphere Replication management server and a vSphere Replication
server can support, see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2034768.
vSphere Replication does not require storage arrays. The vSphere Replication storage replication source and
target can be any storage device, including, but not limited to, storage arrays. You can use Virtual SAN
(VSAN) storage with vSphere Replication.
NOTE vSphere 5.5 includes Virtual SAN as an experimental feature. You can perform testing with Virtual
SAN, but it is not supported for use in a production environment. See the release notes for this release for
information about how to enable Virtual SAN.
You can configure vSphere Replication to regularly create and retain snapshots of protected virtual
machines on the recovery site. Taking multiple point-in-time (MPIT) snapshots of virtual machines allows
you to retain more than one replica of a virtual machine on the recovery site. Each snapshot reflects the state
of the virtual machine at a certain point in time. You can select which snapshot to recover when you use
vSphere Replication to perform a recovery.
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.
Figure 13. SRM Architecture with vSphere Replication
SRM plug-in
vSphere Client
Protected Site
SRM plug-in
vSphere Client
Recovery Site
ESXi
Server
VR Agent
ESXi
Server
VR Agent
vCenter Server
VMFS
VMFS
Storage
VMFS
VMFS
Storage
ESXi
Server
VR Agent
SRM Server
VR Appliance
Network
File Copy
ESXi
SRM Server
Additional
VR Server
Network
File Copy
ESXi
VR Appliance
vSphere replication
vCenter Server
Site Recovery Manager Installation and Configuration
14 VMware, Inc.