Storage Policy Protection Groups and Periodic Polling

Storage policy protection groups attempt to protect virtual machines associated with storage policies only during policy association when Site Recovery Manager Server starts. Site Recovery Manager does not attempt to periodically protect virtual machines that are already associated with a storage policy.

As a result of the absence of periodic polling of the virtual machines in storage policy protection groups, some limitations apply to storage policy protection groups.

• If you make modifications to a virtual machine's storage policy associations while Site Recovery Manager is disconnected from vCenter Server, the changes might not be reflected. This is also true if you delete a virtual machine and it is automatically disassociated from its storage policy.
• If you protect a virtual machine that is associated with two protection groups, where one is a storage policy protection group, the storage policy protection group does not automatically protect the virtual machine if you delete the other protection group. You must reapply the storage policy to the virtual machine for it to be protected by the storage policy protection group.
• If you protect a virtual machine that is associated with two protection groups, where one is a storage policy protection group, the storage policy protection group does not automatically protect the virtual machine if you reconfigured the other protection group to prevent virtual machine overlap. You must reapply the storage policy to the virtual machine for it to be protected by the storage policy protection group.
• If you protect a virtual machine that is associated with two storage policy protection groups, migrate the virtual machine, and update its storage policy to associate it with the newer protection group rather than with the older one, the protection of the virtual machine might fail.

Storage policy protection groups do not automatically protect some virtual machines in certain circumstances.

• Virtual machines that are not initially protected due to licensing limits are not protected even after you modify consistency groups and virtual machines to meet the licensing limit.
• Virtual machines that are not initially protected due to licensing limits are not protected even after you install a license for a larger number of virtual machines.
• Virtual machine templates that are not initially protected are not protected even after you convert them to standard virtual machines.
• Virtual machines in vApps that are not initially protected are not protected even after you move them to a standard resource pool.

To resolve these problems, reassociate the affected virtual machines with their current storage policies or restart Site Recovery Manager Server.