Configure new protection to replicate the workload from one site to another while keeping it running in the source site. After a successful replication, if the source site becomes unavailable, you can fail over and power on the protected workload in the destination site.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.5 or later is deployed for selecting a sizing compute policy.
  • 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 your session is extended to the site in which the vApps or virtual machines you are about to protect reside. For more information, see Authenticating to paired remote cloud sites.

Procedure

  1. In the left pane, choose a replication direction by clicking Incoming Replications or Outgoing Replications.
    • Alternatively, from the on-premises vSphere Client either under the Hosts and Clusters or under the VMs and Templates inventories, right-click the virtual machine or from the Actions menu select:
      • Configure Protection
      • Configure Migration
      • Fast Migration
  2. Click All Actions > New Protection.
  3. To create the protection, depending on the source and destination sites complete the New Replication wizard.
    • For on-premises site as source:
      • On the Source VMs page, select the source virtual machines, then click Next.

        For cloud site backed by VMware Cloud Director as destination, optionally activate the Group VMs to a single vApp toggle.

      • (Optional) On the vApp Settings page that shows after activating the Group VMs to a single vApp toggle from the Source VMs page, if you enter the vApp name of an already existing vApp replication the selected virtual machines become part of that replication. Optionally, when protecting multiple virtual machines change their order of boot by dragging each row and set optional boot delay between each replicated virtual machine in the resulting vApp, then click Next.
    • For cloud site backed by VMware Cloud Director as source:
      • On the Source VMs and vApps page, select the source workloads, then click Next.
    • For vSphere DR and migration from vCenter Server site to vCenter Server site as destination:
      • On the Datastore page, select the destination datastore for placing the recovered workloads, then click Next.
    • For cloud site backed by VMware Cloud Director as destination:
      • On the Destination VDC and Storage policy page, select the destination virtual data center and the storage policy for placing the recovered workloads, then click Next.

      For seed vApps and virtual machines, the Replicator Service uses the storage policy of the seed.

      For VDCs that do not have replications to them, the Quota column shows Currently unavailable, and refreshes once every 10 minutes.

    • On the Settings page, configure the following protection settings depending on the source and destination sites, then click Next.
    Option Description
    Use SLA profile
    • To set the SLA settings of the replication, select any of the preconfigured SLA profiles.
    • Alternatively, select Configure settings manually then select the following SLA settings.
    Target recovery point objective (RPO) If you selected Configure settings manually, set the acceptable period for which data can be lost if there is a site failure by using the slider or by clicking the time intervals. The available RPO range for a protection is from one minute to 24 hours.
    Note: For the lowest RPO of one minute, follow the recommendations for lowering the occurrence of RPO violations for the protection, by using all-flash storage and see Replicating workloads.

    With one minute RPO, even when meeting these recommendations, an I/O intensive protected workload can still cause RPO violations.

    Retention policy for point in time instances

    If you selected Configure settings manually, to preserve multiple rotated distinct instances to which the virtual machines can be recovered, select this option, select the number of replication instances to keep, and select the retention time distance and unit.

    The retention distance unit must be greater than RPO.
    Compress replication traffic If you selected Configure settings manually, to apply compression on the replication data traffic for reducing the network data traffic at the expense of CPU, select this option.

    Disk Provisioning

    		 For vSphere DR and migration between vCenter Server sites, select one of the following provisioning formats for the destination disk:
    • Thin Provision
    • Thick Provision Lazy Zeroed
    • Thick Provision Eager Zeroed
    For information about the disk provisioning, see Replicating Thin or Thick Provisioning Virtual Disks.
    Delay start synchronization
    If you selected Configure settings manually, choose the following option.
    • To schedule the start of the replication, select this option and enter the local date and time to start the replication.
    • To start the replication when the wizard finishes, leave this option deselected.
    VDC policy settings
    • VDC VM placement policy
    • VDC VM sizing policy
    For a protection to a cloud site backed by VMware Cloud Director, optionally from the drop-down menus, select the organization VDC compute policies to apply on the recovered workloads. For more information, see VDC compute policies.

    If you do not select a sizing policy for the replication, then VMware Cloud Director automatically applies the system default sizing policy on the destination virtual machine.
    Exclude disks Optionally, to select specific hard disks of the virtual machines for replicating to the destination site and reduce the replication data network traffic, activate this toggle.
    Configure Seed VMs For protection to or from a cloud site backed by VMware Cloud Director, optionally, to select a previous copy of the virtual machines in the destination site and reduce the replication data network traffic, activate this toggle.
    • (Optional) On the Replicated Disks page that shows after activating the Exclude disks toggle from the Settings page, deselect the disks of the selected workload to exclude from replicating, then click Next.
    • (Optional) On the Seed VM page, that shows after activating the Configure Seed VMs toggle from the Settings page, select a vApp or a virtual machine as a replication seed, then click Next.
    • On the Ready to complete page, verify that the protection settings are correct, then click Finish.

Results

After completing the wizard, in the Replication type column for this replication, you see a Protection state.

What to do next

You can fail over, or test, or migrate the protected workload to the destination site. To fail over, the source workload does not need be operational. For more information, see Failover of a replication, or Test failover a replication, or Migrate a replication.