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
Configure Replication for Multiple Virtual Machines to
vCenter Server
You can configure replication for multiple virtual machines from one vCenter Server instance to another
by using the Multi-VM Configure Replication wizard.
When you configure replication, you set a recovery point objective (RPO) to determine the maximum data
loss that you can tolerate. For example, an RPO of 1 hour seeks to ensure that a virtual machine loses
the data for no more than 1 hour during the recovery. For smaller RPO values, less data is lost in a
recovery, but more network bandwidth is consumed keeping the replica up to date. The RPO value affects
replication scheduling, but vSphere Replication does not adhere to a strict replication schedule. See How
the Recovery Point Objective Affects Replication Scheduling and How the 5 Minute Recovery Point
Objective Works.
Every time that a virtual machine reaches its RPO target, vSphere Replication records approximately
3800 bytes of data in the vCenter Server events database. If you set a low RPO period, this can quickly
create a large volume of data in the database. To reduce the volume of data that is kept in the
vCenter Server events database, limit the number of days that vCenter Server retains event data. See
Configure Database Retention Policy in the vCenter Server and Host Management Guide. Alternatively,
set a higher RPO value.
vSphere Replication guarantees crash consistency amongst all the disks that belong to a virtual machine.
If you use quiescing, you might obtain a higher level of consistency. The available quiescing types are
determined by the operating system of the virtual machine. See Interoperability Pages for vSphere
Replication 6.5 for quiescing support for Windows and Linux virtual machines.
You can configure virtual machines to replicate from and to Virtual SAN datastores. See Using vSphere
Replication with Virtual SAN Storage for the limitations when using vSphere Replication with Virtual SAN.
Note VMware Virtual SAN is a fully supported feature of vSphere 5.5 Update 1 and later.
Configuring vSphere Replication on a large number of virtual machines simultaneously when using Virtual
SAN storage can cause the initial full synchronization of the virtual machine files to run very slowly. Initial
full synchronization operations generate heavy I/O traffic, and configuring too many replications at the
same time can overload the Virtual SAN storage. Configure vSphere Replication in batches of a
maximum of 30 virtual machines at a time.
Prerequisites
n
Verify that the vSphere Replication appliance is deployed at the source and the target sites.
n
To enable the quiescing of virtual machines that run Linux guest OS, install the latest version of
VMware Tools on each Linux machine that you plan to replicate.
Procedure
1 On the vSphere Web Client Home page, click vSphere Replication.
Using VMware vSphere Replication
VMware, Inc. 18