Create Virtual Volumes Protection Groups

Create Virtual Volumes protection groups to protect virtual machines for which you configured Virtual Volumes replication.

Prerequisites

Verify that you have included virtual machines in datastores for which you configured Virtual Volumes replication.

Procedure

1. In the vSphere Client, click Site Recovery > Open Site Recovery.
2. On the Site Recovery home tab, select a site pair, and click View Details.
3. Click the Protection Groups tab, and click New Protection Group to create a protection group.
4. On the Name and direction page, enter a name and description for the protection group, select a direction, and click Next.
5. On the Protection group type pane, select Virtual Volumes (vVol replication), select a specific fault domain, and click Next.
   A fault domain can contain more than one Storage Container. When you select a fault domain, Site Recovery Manager enumerates all storage containers in the fault domain. For each storage container, Site Recovery Manager collects all the replication groups and VMs. Only one fault domain is associated to a particular Site Recovery Manager protection group. You cannot have replication groups from different fault domains in one protection group, but you can have replication groups from multiple storage containers part of one fault domain in one protection group. For example, if Fault Domain A to Fault Domain B has a replication group 1 with 1 VM called Test_AB and Fault Domain A to Fault Domain C has a replication group 2 with 1 VM called Test_AC, you can create a protection group containing both replication groups.
6. Select replication groups to add to the protection group and click Next.
   You can expand each replication group row to see the virtual machines that the group contains.

   Virtual machines that have replication errors are listed separately. You can see them by enabling Show virtual machines which cannot be protected.

   Note: Virtual Volumes does not support the recovery of template virtual machines.
7. On the Recovery plan page, you can optionally add the protection group to a recovery plan.

   Option	Description
   Add to existing recovery plan	Adds the protection group to an existing recovery plan.
   Add to new recovery plan	Adds the protection group to a new recovery plan. If you select this option, you must enter a recovery plan name.
   Do not add to recovery plan now	Select this option if you do not want to add the protection group to a recovery plan.

8. Review your settings and click Finish.
   You can monitor the progress of the creation of the protection group on the Protection Group tab.
   • If Site Recovery Manager successfully applied inventory mappings to the protected virtual machines, the protection status of the protection group is OK.
   • If you did not configure inventory mappings, or if Site Recovery Manager was unable to apply them, the protection status of the protection group is Not Configured.

What to do next

If the protection status of the protection group is Not Configured, apply inventory mappings to the virtual machines:

• To apply site-wide inventory mappings, or to check whether inventory mappings that you have already set are valid, see Configure Inventory Mappings. To apply these mappings to all the virtual machines, see Apply Inventory Mappings to All Members of an Array-Based, Virtual Volumes, or vSphere Replication Protection Group.
• To apply inventory mappings to each virtual machine in the protection group individually, see Configure Inventory Mappings for an Individual Virtual Machine in an Array-Based, Virtual Volumes, or vSphere Replication Protection Group.