6.0

The number of replication instances that vSphere Replication keeps depends on the configured
retention policy, and 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 number of instances is not sufficient, 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.
13 Click Next.
14 On the Ready to complete page, review the replication settings, and click Finish.
For each source virtual machine, a configuration task appears in the Recent Tasks list in the bottom of the
vSphere Web Client. A progress bar indicates that the source virtual machine is being configured for
replication.
For each source virtual machine that is configured successfully, a replication task appears on the vSphere
Replication tab under Monitor.
For source virtual machines that are powered on, the initial synchronization starts after the configuration.
For source virtual machine that are powered off, the initial synchronization starts when you power on the
virtual machines.
NOTE If a replication source virtual machine is powered off, the replication remains in Not Active state
until you power on the virtual machine.
What to do next
On the vSphere Replication tab under Monitor, you can check the state of each replication. See “Monitoring
the Status of Replication Tasks,” on page 39.
You can click a replication task in the list and use the tabs at the bottom of the vSphere Web Client to view
details about the replication, the recovery status, and the latest performed test, if test results are not cleared
yet.
Using Replication Seeds for Replications to Cloud
For each new replication that you configure, an initial full synchronization operation is performed. During
this operation, vSphere Replication copies the whole data from the source virtual machine to a placeholder
vApp on the target site.
If the source virtual machine is too big, or the bandwidth of your network connection to the cloud is too
low, the initial full sync might take a long time. Therefore, you might choose to copy the source virtual
machine to the target site by using removable media, or other means of data transfer. Then you can
configure a replication and use the virtual machine copy on the target site as a replication seed. When a
replication is configured to use a seed vApp, vSphere Replication does not copy the whole source virtual
machine to the target site. Instead, it copies to the seed vApp only the different blocks between the source
virtual machine and the seed.
NOTE vSphere Replication stores the replication data in the seed vApp. No copies of the seed vApp are
created. Therefore, a seed vApp can be used for only one replication.
Creating Seed vApps in the Cloud
Seed vApps on the target site can be created in the following ways.
n
Offline data transfer: You can export a virtual machine as an OVF package and let a Cloud service
administrator import the package in your cloud organization.
vSphere Replication for Disaster Recovery to Cloud
26 VMware, Inc.