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
How the 5 Minute Recovery Point Objective Works
You can use the 5 minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO) if the target and the source sites use VMFS
6.0, VMFS 5.x, NFS 4.1, NFS 3, VVOL, or Virtual SAN 6.0 storage and later.
vSphere Replication 6.5 displays the 5 minute RPO setting when the target and the source site use
VMFS 6.0, VMFS 5.x, NFS 4.1, NFS 3, VVOL, or Virtual SAN 6.0 storage and later.
You can use the 5 minute RPO setting if you are using different datastore types between the source and
the target site.
The 5 minute RPO can be applied to a maximum of 100 VMs on VMFS 6.0, VMFS 5.x, NFS 4.1, NFS 3,
and Virtual SAN 6.0 storage and later. The maximum for VVOL datastore is 50 VMs.
Note If you select the OS quiescing option while configuring replication, you cannot use an RPO value
lower than 15 minutes.
How Retention Policy Works
When you configure a replication, you can enable the retention of up to 24 VM replica instances from
Multiple Points in Time (MPIT).
For example, you can configure the retention of 3 instances per day for the last 5 days.
After you recover a replicated virtual machine, the retained replicas appear as snapshots of the virtual
machine in the vSphere Web Client. The list of snapshots includes the retained instances according to the
retention policy that you set, and the latest instance. By the example above, the list will contain 15
snapshots and the latest saved instance of the virtual machine, or a total of 16 snapshots. You can use
the snapshots to revert to an earlier state of the recovered virtual machine.
Administrators cannot configure the precise time when replica instances are created, because the
retention policy is not directly related to replication schedule and RPO. As a consequence, replications
with the same retention policy might not result in replicas retained at the same time instants.
RPO Without Retention Policy
By default, vSphere Replication is configured to a 4-hour RPO. This means that the latest available
replica instance can never reflect a state of the virtual machine that is older than 4 hours. You can adjust
the RPO interval when you configure or reconfigure a replication.
When the age of the latest replication instance approaches the RPO interval, vSphere Replication starts a
sync operation to create a new instance on the target site. The replication instance reflects the state of
the virtual machine at the time the synchronisation starts. If no retention policy is configured, when the
new instance is created, the previous instance expires and the vSphere Replication Server deletes it.
Using VMware vSphere Replication
VMware, Inc. 7