VM Group Replication Options for VMware

When you use a VM group to configure replication for a VMware destination, identify the source VMs, and then provide VMware-specific values for replication to the destination site.

You can replicate to VMware from VMware streaming backups or VMware IntelliSnap backups.

Content Options

• Hypervisors: Select the hypervisor for the source VMs.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Name: Enter a descriptive name for the replication group, or change the name.

• Select VM group (not applicable for replication using VMware IntelliSnap backups): Select an existing VM group, or select Create new VM group to add specific VMs and create a new VM group.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Update the replication group if VMs are added or removed from this VM group: Select this option when you are replicating all of the VMs in a VM group, to ensure that changes to the VM group will be reflected in replication operations.

• Select VMs: Select specific virtual machines to be replicated and click OK.

  For replication using VMware streaming backups, you can select VMs from the specified VM group.

Target Options

• Recovery target: Select a previously defined recovery target or click Create new to create a new recovery target.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Access node: Select a VSA proxy that can be used to perform the replication operation.

  To restore multiple instances or VMs simultaneously, select Automatic to distribute the workload (instances or VMs) in the replication job across the access nodes that are assigned for the destination hypervisor. This option is available for operations both from streaming backups or IntelliSnap backup copies.

  First, the VMs are assigned to the access nodes by a host match. If access nodes are not available in the same host, then the VMs are assigned to access nodes in the same data center. If there is no host or data center match, then VMs are assigned using the round-robin method.

  If you already configured the Access Node setting on the recovery target, you can change that setting in the replication group Access Node option.

• Warm site recovery (Restore destination VM at the time of failover): Move this toggle key to the right to create a destination VM only during a failover.

Advanced Options

• Validate destination VM (Power ON and OFF): Select this option to verify that the destination VM is bootable by powering it on and then powering off. Changes resulting from the power on are not preserved. If guest tools are not installed on the source VM, validation is skipped even when this option is selected.

  The boot disk for the source VM must be a local disk (on an ESX datastore that is accessible without a network connection). If the VM uses an iSCSI virtual disk to boot or requires a network connection to access the boot disk, validation fails because the network connection is disabled for validation.

  If validation fails, the destination virtual machine reverts back to its last valid (bootable) state.

• Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists: When this option is selected, the first snapshot replication operation replaces an existing virtual machine with the same name in the target location, even if the destination VM is running.

  Replication from incremental backups are not affected by this setting. Subsequent incremental backups and replication updates are applied to the destination VM without overwriting the VM. If the destination VM is currently running, the replication operation fails.

• Snapshots to retain on destination VM: Enter the maximum number of recovery point snapshots to retain on the destination site. Each recovery point snapshot represents the state of a VM that you can choose when performing a point-in-time failover.

• Disk Provisioning: Select the disk provisioning type for the destination VM: Original, Thick Lazy Zero, Thin, or Thick Eager Zero.

  When configuring a domain controller VM for replication, select Thick Lazy Zero.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Transport mode for VMware: Use Auto to have the transport mode selected automatically based on the environment, or select a different value from this list: SAN, Hot Add, NBD, NBD SSL, or NAS.

• Select copy: Select the backup copy that should be used as source for the replication operation.

Override Options

To change the destination settings for specific VMs, select the VMs from the Virtual machine list. You can enter the following information:

• VM display name: Enter the display name for the destination VM, or enter a prefix or suffix to apply to multiple VMs.

  You can only change this value when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• Destination host: Click Browse to select a host for the destination VM.

  You can only change this value when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• Datastore: Select a datastore to be used for virtual machine disks.

  You can only change this value when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• Resource pool: Select a resource pool for the destination VM.

  You can only change this value when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• VM folder: To replicate to a folder, click Browse and select the destination folder.

• Network settings: Click Add to create a new mapping between a source network and a destination network.

• IP address settings: Click Add to customize IP address settings.

  If a Windows or Linux source VM uses a static IP address, you can configure an IP address for the destination VM. You can configure IP address mapping for static IP addresses for source VMs that run the following operating systems:

  • Windows 2000 and later versions

  • CentOS or RHEL: 5.x, 6x, 7.x, 8.x

  • Ubuntu: 12.x, 14.x, 16.x

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: 10.x, 11.x, 12.x

Related Topics

• Creating a Replication Group from a VM Group

• Distributed Workloads for Replication