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
The number of replication instances that vSphere Replication keeps depends on the configured retention
policy, but also requires that the RPO period is short enough for these instances to be created. Because
vSphere Replication does not check whether the RPO settings will create enough instances to keep, and
does not display a warning message if the instances are not enough, you must ensure that you set
vSphere Replication to create the instances that you want to keep. For example, if you set
vSphere Replication to keep 6 replication instances per day, the RPO period should not exceed 4 hours,
so that vSphere Replication can create 6 instances in 24 hours.
Replicating a Virtual Machine and Enabling Multiple Point
in Time Instances
You can recover virtual machines at specific points in time (PIT) such as the last known consistent state.
When you configure replication of a virtual machine, you can enable multiple point in time (PIT) instances
in the recovery settings in the Configure Replication wizard. vSphere Replication retains a number of
snapshot instances of the virtual machine on the target site based on the retention policy that you specify.
vSphere Replication supports a maximum of 24 snapshot instances. After you recover a virtual machine,
you can revert it to a specific snapshot.
During replication, vSphere Replication replicates all aspects of the virtual machine to the target site,
including any potential viruses and corrupted applications. If a virtual machine suffers from a virus or
corruption and you have configured vSphere Replication to keep PIT snapshots, you can recover the
virtual machine and then revert it to a snapshot of the virtual machine in its uncorrupted state.
You can also use the PIT instances to recover the last known good state of a database.
Note vSphere Replication does not replicate virtual machine snapshots.
Figure 2‑1. Recovering a Virtual Machine at Points in Time (PIT)
vSphere Web Client
VR Appliance
t1
VM
VM VM VM
t3t2
vSphere Web Client
VR Appliance
VM
Replication
Source Site
Target Site
t0
Using vSphere Replication with Virtual SAN Storage
You can use VMware Virtual SAN datastores as target datastores when configuring replications. Follow
the guidelines when using vSphere Replication with Virtual SAN storage.
Note VMware Virtual SAN is a fully supported feature of vSphere 5.5 Update 1 and later.
Using VMware vSphere Replication
VMware, Inc. 9