VMware HCX Disaster Recovery (DR) is a service intended to protect virtual workloads managed by VMware vSphere that are either deployed in a private or a public cloud.

Limitations

VMware HCX Disaster Recovery has the following limitations:

  • The number of concurrent VM protections is based on each HCX Manager. For HCX appliance limit information, see VMware Configurations Maximums.

  • HCX DR does not support using datastore clusters for VM protection operations.
  • HCX DR does not support protecting encrypted VMs.
  • Virtual machines using virtual NVMe (vNVME) Controllers cannot be recovered during Test Recovery or Recovery VM operations.

  • Guest customization is not available for HCX DR protection or recovery operations.

  • Taking snapshots of a VM while protected, either manually or using a third-party backup solution, can disrupt the replication process. To prevent any impact, it is required to stop those services that create or remove snapshots during replication. Refer to KB79220 for more information.

Benefits

  • Secure enterprise-to-cloud and cloud-to-cloud asynchronous replication and recovery of virtual machines.

  • Recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) policy compliance.

    Note:

    RPO is the interval of time that might pass during a disruption before the quantity of data lost during that period exceeds your Business Continuity/Disaster Recovery maximum allowable threshold. An RTO is the duration of time, and a service level within which data must be restored after a disaster to avoid unacceptable consequences associated with a break in continuity.

  • Reverse failover of workflows to the source site.

  • Self-service RPO settings from 5 minutes to 24 hours per virtual machine.

    Note:

    RPO policy compliance depends on the available bandwidth from the source site to the destination site.

  • Multiple point-in-time recovery snapshots that allows up to 24 previous replication points.

  • Optimized replication throughput by using WAN Optimization.

  • Route replication traffic through a customer-preferred direct connect network.

  • On-premises monitoring and management with the fully integrated vSphere Client.

  • Access to production-level support from VMware.

  • While workloads are protected by HCX Disaster Recovery, the system automatically detects virtual machine disk additions or removals and reconfigures running protections to accommodate these changes. HCX continues monitoring disk changes until workloads are recovered, or protection is removed on them.