6.5
Table Of Contents
- Using VMware vSphere Replication
- Contents
- About Using VMware vSphere Replication
- Replicating Virtual Machines
- How the Recovery Point Objective Affects Replication Scheduling
- How the 5 Minute Recovery Point Objective Works
- How Retention Policy Works
- Replicating a Virtual Machine and Enabling Multiple Point in Time Instances
- Using vSphere Replication with Virtual SAN Storage
- Using vSphere Replication with vSphere Storage DRS
- How vSphere Replication Synchronizes Data Between vCenter Server Sites During Initial Configuration
- Replicating Virtual Machines Using Replication Seeds
- Replicating a Virtual Machine in a Single vCenter Server Instance
- Best Practices For Using and Configuring vSphere Replication
- Configure Replication for a Single Virtual Machine to vCenter Server
- Configure Replication for Multiple Virtual Machines to vCenter Server
- Move a Replication to a New vSphere Replication Server
- Stop Replicating a Virtual Machine
- Reconfiguring Replications
- Reconfigure Recovery Point Objectives (RPO) in Replications
- Resize the Virtual Machine Disk Files of a Replication that Uses Replication Seeds
- Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files of a Replication that Does Not Use Replication Seeds
- Change the Point in Time Settings of a Replication
- Change the Target Datastore Location of a Replication
- Monitoring and Managing Replications in vSphere Replication
- Performing a Recovery with vSphere Replication
- Troubleshooting vSphere Replication
- Generate vSphere Replication Support Bundle
- vSphere Replication Events and Alarms
- Solutions for Common vSphere Replication Problems
- Error at vService Bindings When Deploying the vSphere Replication Appliance
- OVF Package is Invalid and Cannot be Deployed
- Connection Errors Between vSphere Replication and SQL Server Cannot be Resolved
- Application Quiescing Changes to File System Quiescing During vMotion to an Older Host
- Configuring Replication Fails for Virtual Machines with Two Disks on Different Datastores
- vSphere Replication Service Fails with Unresolved Host Error
- Scalability Problems when Replicating Many Virtual Machines with a Short RPO to a Shared VMFS Datastore on ESXi Server 5.0
- vSphere Replication Sites Appear in the Not Authenticated State
- Error Recovering Virtual Machine in a Single vCenter Server Instance
- vSphere Replication RPO Violations
- vSphere Replication Appliance Extension Cannot Be Deleted
- vSphere Replication Does Not Start After Moving the Host
- Unexpected vSphere Replication Failure Results in a Generic Error
- Reconnecting Sites Fails If One Of the vCenter Servers Has Changed Its IP Address
- Uploading a Valid Certificate to vSphere Replication Results in a Warning
- vSphere Replication Server Registration Takes Several Minutes
- Generating Support Bundles Disrupts vSphere Replication Recovery
- vSphere Replication Operations Take a Long Time to Complete
- vSphere Replication Operations Fail with Authentication Error
- vSphere Replication Does Not Display Incoming Replications When the Source Site is Inaccessible
- vSphere Replication is Inaccessible After Changing vCenter Server Certificate
- vSphere Replication Cannot Establish a Connection to the Hosts
- Anti-virus Agent in Firewall Terminates Virtual Machine Replication
- Initial Full Synchronization of Virtual Machine Files to VMware Virtual SAN Storage Is Slow
- Configuring Replication Fails Because Another Virtual Machine has the Same Instance UUID
- Not Active Replication Status of Virtual Machines
- vSphere Replication Operations Run Slowly as the Number of Replications Increases
- Error at Reconfiguring the vSphere Replication Management Server from the Virtual Appliance Management Interface
- Unable to Establish an SSH Connection to the vSphere Replication Appliance
- The Replication Pauses When You Add a New Disk To the Source VM
- The vSphere Replication Appliance Root File System Switches to Read-only Mode and Login Fails
Best Practices For Using and Configuring
vSphere Replication
Best practices for using and configuring vSphere Replication can prevent your environment from possible
issues during replication.
Setting the Optimal Recovering Point Objective (RPO) Time
The replication of several thousand virtual machines (VMs) is a bandwidth consuming process.
vSphere Replication lets you set the RPO to 15 minutes, but you must estimate the optimal RPO time to
save bandwidth for replication and to cover your business requirements for protection of your VMs. For
example, if your business requires replication of 2,000 VMs with an 8 hour RPO, set the RPO time to 8
hours to meet the business needs and save bandwidth. For more details, see Calculate Bandwidth for
vSphere Replication in the vSphere Replication Installation and Configuration guide.
Using Multiple Point in Time (MPIT) Recovery
Each point in time snapshot consumes storage. The amount consumed depends on the data change rate
in the VM. When you set multiple point in time instances for replication of a VM between two
vCenter Server sites, vSphere Replication presents the retained instances as standard snapshots after
recovery. The time required to consolidate snapshots after recovery, increases with the number of
snapshots.
Although vSphere Replication supports up to 24 recovery points, you must set the MPIT to the lowest
number of recovery points that meets your business requirements. For example, if the business
requirement is for 10 recovery points, you must set up vSphere Replication to save only 10 snapshots.
You can set up two recovery points per day for the last five days. As a result, the consumed storage and
the time needed to consolidate the snapshots after recovery are less than if you use the maximum
number of recovery points.
Configuring Quiescing
For VMs with high levels of storage I/O, quiescing of the file system and applications can take several
minutes and impact the performance of the VM . When quiescing a file system and applications for
Windows VMs, vSphere Replication requires a regular VM snapshot before replication. When you
estimate the RPO time, consider the time and resource consumption for the quiescing and for the
consolidation of the snapshots. For example, if you configure replication of a Windows VM with an RPO
of 15 minutes and quiescing is enabled, vSphere Replication generates a VM snapshot and consolidates
it every 15 minutes.
Using VMware vSphere Replication
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