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.

Note: With VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.2 and later, you can create a replication for a virtual machine (VM) with enabled virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM), and with full, partial, or no encryption of the attached storage disks. You can also create a replication for a non-encrypted VM and encypt the VM as a part of the replication process. For more information, see Create a replication for encrypted virtual machines.

Prerequisites

  • Verify that VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7 or later 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 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.
    • 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 an on-premises site as a source and a Cloud Director site as a destination:
      1. On the Source VMs page, select the source virtual machines, then click Next.

        To unite the selected virtual machines in one vApp, activate the Group VMs to a single vApp toggle.

      2. On the vApp Settings page, that shows after activating Group VMs to a single vApp, you must enter a vApp name for the group. By entering 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.
      3. On the Destination VDC and Storage policy page, select the destination virtual data center. Then, either select the storage policy for placing the recovered workloads and click Next, or to configure seed and flexible storage profile assignment, activate the Advanced Datastore Settings toggle.
    • For a Cloud Director site as a source:
      • On the Source VMs and vApps page, select the source workloads, then click Next.
      • For an on-premises site as a destination: to configure seed and flexible storage profile assignment on the next page, activate the Advanced Datastore Settings toggle. Then, click Next.
      • For a Cloud Director site as a destination: on the Destination VDC and Storage policy page, select the destination virtual data center. Then, either select the storage policy for placing the recovered workloads, or to configure seed and use flexible storage profile assignment, activate the Advanced Datastore Settings toggle.
    • For vSphere DR and migration to a vCenter Server site as a destination:
      1. On the Source VMs page, select the source virtual machines, then click Next.
      2. On the Datastore page, either select the VM storage policy and destination datastore for placing the recovered workloads, or to configure seed and flexible storage profile assignment, activate the Advanced Datastore Settings toggle.
    • Under Advanced Datastore Settings, when activated, configure the following settings for the destination datastore of each virtual machine in the replication:
      1. In the left pane under VM name, click on a virtual machine to configure its advanced datastore settings.
      2. In the right pane under Use a seed VM, to lower the network data traffic and the required time for the initial synchronization by copying only the different data blocks from the source workload and reuse the seed data as a basis for replicating, activate the Configure with seed VM toggle.
      3. Under Use flexible storage profile assignment, you can replicate one virtual machine to multiple datastores. For example, place one of its disks on a separate datastore, or split some disks from the .vmx file.
        Configuration files
        This section does not show for replications from a Cloud Director site as a source to an on-premises site as a destination as it already uses the on-premises placement.
        • From the VM Storage Policy drop-down menu, select the storage policy for the replicated workload configuration files in the destination site.
        • For vSphere DR and migration, from the VM Placement Datastore drop-down menu, select the destination datastore for the replicated workload configuration files.
        • To apply the same to all disks, click Apply,
        Note: From the Disk inclusion drop-down menu, optionally select either to Include All or to Exclude All disks from the VM in the destination. Without any disks selected for replication, you cannot continue.
        Disk X
        • For each disk in the selected VM, under Disk X, to include this disk in the replicated virtual machine, activate the Replicate toggle.
        • From the Storage policy drop-down menu, select a storage policy for this disk. For a Cloud Director site as a destination, this option requires RTVM placement. For more information, see Replication tracking placement solution. This menu does not show for replications from a Cloud Director site as a source to an on-premises site as a destination as it already uses the on-premises placement.
        • For vSphere DR and migration, from the Placement Datastore drop-down menu select a placement datastore for this disk.
      4. After configuring the advanced datastore settings for all needed virtual machines in the replication, click Next.
    • On the Settings page, configure the following protection settings depending on the source and destination sites, then click Next.
    Option Description
    Use SLA profile
    • If SLA profiles are configured, 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 in this table.
    Target recovery point objective (RPO) 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

    To preserve multiple rotated distinct instances to which the virtual machines can be recovered, activate this toggle then select the number of replication instances to keep and select the retention time distance and unit.

    The retention distance unit must be greater than the RPO.

    Activate quiesce

    Activating quiescing ensures consistency before creating an instance.
    Compress replication traffic To apply compression on the replication data traffic for reducing the network data traffic at the expense of CPU, activate this toggle.

    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
    • To schedule the start of the replication, activate this toggle and enter the local date and time to start the replication.
    • Alternatively, to start the replication when the wizard finishes, leave this toggle deactivated.
    Option Description
    VDC policy settings For a Cloud Director site as a destination:
    Note: When a VDC policy with the same name already applies on the source workload, it is pre-selected for you. You can choose to either keep it and continue, or select another VDC policy.
    • Select the organization placement policy to apply on the recovered workloads from the VM placement policy drop-down menu.
    • Select the organization sizing policy from the VM sizing policy drop-down menu. With no sizing policy selected for the replication, VMware Cloud Director automatically applies the system default sizing policy on the destination virtual machine.
    For more information, see VDC compute policies.
    • On the Ready to complete page, verify the selected settings, 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.