When you create a periodic replication group for a VMware destination (without using a VM group), you must identify source VMs, and then provide VMware-specific values for replication to the destination site.
Content Tab
Name: Enter a descriptive name for the replication group, or change the name.
Source hypervisor: Select the hypervisor for the source VMs.
To create a new hypervisor, click Create new.
When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.
Virtual machines: Select specific virtual machines that you want to replicate.
Target Tab
Recovery target: Select a previously defined recovery target.
To create a new recovery target, click Create new.
When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.
Replication type: Select Periodic. The periodic replication method involves taking and cleaning up snapshots frequently on the source VM and requires less bandwidth.
Frequency: Enter how frequently you want to run a replication operation, such as once every 4 Hours or 2 Days.
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 Section
Validate destination VM (Power ON and OFF): To verify that the destination VM is bootable by powering it on and then powering off, select this option. Changes that result from the power on operation are not preserved. Even when this option is selected, if guest tools are not installed on the source VM, validation is skipped.
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 most recent valid (bootable) state.
Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists: To make the first replication operation replace an existing virtual machine with the same name in the target location, even if the destination VM is running, select this option.
Replication operations for incremental updates are not affected by this setting. Incremental replication updates are applied to the destination VM without overwriting the VM. If the destination VM is currently running, the replication 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: To have the transport mode selected automatically based on the environment, select Auto, or select a different value from this list: SAN, Hot Add, NBD, NBD SSL, or NAS.
Storage/Cache Tab
Use snapshot on source: To use a snapshot for replication, select this option.
With this option checked, you must also choose an option from the snap engine list. Virtual Server Agent Snap is the default. Then, in the Cache field, select a cache.
Replication from a snap copy for Cisco Hyperflex or Tintri-based engines is not supported.
Cache: Select the storage pool to use as a temporary cache for the snapshots before they move to the destination site.
Storage: Select the storage pool to use as a recovery store for source data to replicate to the destination site.
Replicate using secondary copy: To replicate a VM using a secondary copy, select this option.
Storage: Select the storage pool to use for secondary copies of source data to replicate to the destination site.
Override Options Tab
To change the destination settings for specific VMs, move the Override virtual machines toggle key to the right, select the VMs from the Replication configuration list, and then click Edit. 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 change this value only when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.
Destination host: To select a host for the destination VM, click Browse.
You can change this value only 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 change this value only 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 change this value only 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.
You can change this value only when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.
Network settings: To create a new mapping between a source network and a destination network, click Add.
IP address settings: To customize IP address settings, click Add.
To customize IP address settings for continuous replication, the VSA Guest Customization package must be installed on the VSA access node.
For continuous replication, you cannot customize IP address settings to use WINS servers. You must use DNS servers.
You cannot customize IP address settings for VMs with encrypted disks. If you configure custom IP address settings for a replication group that includes VMs with encrypted disks, failover operations fail for those VMs.
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
To configure options for pre and post failover and failback scripts, click the Actions menu, click Configure script, and then choose the script that you want to configure.
Summary Tab
The summary tab displays the settings that you configured on each tab for this replication group.