After a failover, return the workload data from the destination site back to the source site by reversing the replication.

After a failover from the source site to the destination site, the migrated workload runs on the destination site. A subsequent reverse task replicates the recovered workload data back to the source protected vApp or virtual machine.
Note: When reversing a replication from a cloud site back to an on-premises site, VMware Cloud Director Availability uses the original datastore for the placement of the workload, regardless of the current on-premises local placement setting.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that VMware Cloud Director Availability is deployed in both the source and in the destination sites.
  • Verify that you can access VMware Cloud Director Availability as a tenant or as a service provider. For more information, see Accessing VMware Cloud Director Availability.
  • Verify that the vApp or the virtual machine is failed over, before you can start a reverse task. For more information, see Perform a Failover Task.
  • Verify that the number of disks in the seed virtual machine matches that of the source virtual machine. Performing a reverse task with mismatching configuration of disks fails with the Disks of provided seed VM don't match the disks of the source VM message. For more information, see Selecting Replicated Disks.

Procedure

  1. In the left pane, choose a replication direction..
  2. Select the vApp or the virtual machine that are failed over and click All actions > Reverse.
  3. In the Reverse window, click Reverse.

    Reversing the replication enables the replication traffic and allows the replication to be recovered back to the source.

  4. In the bottom pane, to monitor the progress of the Reverse task click the Tasks tab.

Results

After the reverse task finishes, the reversed replication overwrites the source vApp or virtual machine. The reversed workload runs in the primary destination site with a workload protection in the primary source site. For the vApp and its virtual machines, in the Recovery state column you see a Reversed state.

What to do next

  • You can test or fail over the workload back in the original source site. For more information, see Test Failover and Perform a Failover Task.
  • You can pause the reversed replication, edit the replication configuration, or migrate the workload.