If the protected source site is unavailable, in the destination site for an already created replication perform a disaster recovery operation and recover the workload.

Prerequisites

Important:
  • Verify that in VMware Cloud Director, the VM discovery option is not activated. For information about deactivating virtual machine discovery, see Discovering and Adopting vApps in the VMware Cloud Director documentation.
  • Verify that the workload is already protected in the destination site. For more information, see Create a protection.
  • Verify that VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.5 or later is deployed for selecting VDC compute policies when failing over to and from cloud sites backed by VMware Cloud Director.
  • 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.

Procedure

  1. In the left pane, choose a replication direction by clicking Incoming Replications or Outgoing Replications.
  2. Select an exiting replication to fail over and click All actions > Failover.
  3. Complete the Failover wizard and depending on the source and destination sites configure the different failover settings for the selected workloads.
    • Start from step e when migrating to or from cloud sites backed by VMware Cloud Director, skipping steps a, b, c, and d.
    • Start from step a for vSphere DR and migration between vCenter Server sites.
    1. The Default Settings page shows when the selected replication is already configured with recovery settings and to use them and skip to step e, select Use preset Recovery Settings.
      For information about configuring the recovery settings for vSphere DR and migration between vCenter Server sites, see Configure recovery settings for vSphere DR and migration.
    2. On the VM Folder page, select a destination location for storing the failed over virtual machines, then click Next.
    3. On the Compute Resource page, select a destination compute resource for the failed over virtual machines, then click Next.
    4. On the Network Mappings page, select a network mapping for each adapter connected to each virtual machine, then click Next.
    5. On the Recovery Settings page, select the configuration for the recovered workload depending on the destination site, then click Next.
      Option Description
      Instances handling after recovery
      • Default: selecting this option provides the lowest Recovery Time Objective (RTO). To optimize performance, perform instances consolidation after the recover task completes.
      • Expose PITs: only available for failing over already protected virtual machines to an on-premises site as a destination, selecting this option allows instances older than the selected instance to be exported as snapshots to the recovered virtual machine.
      • Consolidate: selecting this option consolidates all instances into the recovered disk. This can improve the runtime performance of the recovered virtual machine in the destination site but might significantly increase the RTO.
      Power settings

      Powers on the recovered workload in the destination site after the failover task completes.
      Network Settings
      For migrations to and from cloud sites backed by VMware Cloud Director:
      • Select Apply preconfigured network settings on failover, to assign the network configured during the virtual machine replication.
      • Select Connect all VMs to network and from the drop-down menu select a network to connect the replicated virtual machines to.
      VDC policy settings
      • VDC VM placement policy
      • VDC VM sizing policy
      For a failover to or from 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.
    6. On the Recovery Instance page, if instances are preserved configure the recovery point in time, then click Next.
      Option Description
      Synchronize all VMs to their current state

      Creates an instance of the powered on workload with its latest changes and uses that instance for the test failover.
      Manually select existing instance

      Select an instance without synchronizing the data for the recovered workload.
    7. On the Ready To Complete page, verify that the failover settings are correct, then click Finish.
      The Last changed column shows the failover progress in percentages. When the failover of the workload completes, the Recovery state column of this replication shows a green Failed-Over state.
  4. (Optional) In the bottom pane, to monitor the progress of the task, click the Tasks tab.

Results

After the failover task completes, the failed over workload runs in the destination site and the source workload is no longer protected.

What to do next

  • You can reverse and reprotect the workload back to the source site. For more information, see Reverse a Replication.
  • You can permanently stop the traffic of this replication, remove the replication and remove all retained replication instances, by clicking All actions > Delete replication.