Release Notes Archive for VMware Cloud DR

You can view the historical archive of VMware Cloud DR release notes.

For the most current VMware Live Recovery release notes, see VMware Live Recovery Release Notes.

New Features

27 February 2024

New Supported AWS Region: Protect and recover your workloads in the Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) AWS region.

2 February 2024

- 15 Minute RPO now GA. Protect mission-critical workloads with enterprise grade SLAs with RPOs as little as 15 minutes. Snapshot schedules using high-frequency snapshots can now be set to run every 15 minutes. This feature was in preview, and is now Generally Available (GA). 15 minute RPO is supported for up to 200 VMs per-protection group. The maximum number of VMs with 15 minute RPO can vary, depending on the network bandwidth and the change rates per disk.
- Support for VMW on AWS Compute Gateways on the Recovery SDDC. Isolate and secure the networking on your VMware Cloud on AWS recovery SDDC by creating NSX Compute Gateways (CGWs) and assigning them to your disaster recovery and test/ransomware DR Plan configurations. With this capability, you can fail over and run production workloads on a dedicated network in the recovery SDDC, and safely power on and repair ransomware-infected VMs on a different CGW-specified network in the same recovery SDDC.
- Support for VMware Transit Connect for VMC on AWS protected sites. Support stringent security and compliance internet usage guidelines between your VMC on AWS protected source site and VMware Cloud DR by using a dedicated private network, VMware Transit Connect. VMware Transit Connect provides a dedicated, private and secure connection between your VMware Cloud on AWS source SDDC and VMware Cloud DR for replication, failover and failback traffic.
- Recover ransomware-cleansed workloads to the recovery SDDC. Enhance your cyber resiliency runbook and be better prepared to recover from a ransomware attack by leveraging the option to recover cleansed ransomware workloads to the VMware Cloud DR recovery SDDC. In addition to the existing options of recovering ransomware cleansed workloads to the original protected site or a new SDDC, this new option enables orchestrated VM restore to the recovery SDDC with the VM running in a failed over state. Because the scope of a ransomware attack is unpredictable, having a variety of VM restore options for cleansed workloads allows you to fine-tune remediation to your specific situation.
- Quiescing for high-frequency snapshots. Enjoy improved data consistency and recoverability of database workloads and multi-tier applications with quiescing of high-frequency snapshots. When used with Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) and Linux distributions, high-frequency snapshots will pause the state of running processes on the VM to provide a consistent state of any applications running at the time a snapshot is taken. This is especially useful when protecting databases that require a controlled power down to ensure the database is fully up-to-date at the time of snapshotting.
- Automatically install the Linux security sensor when using the ransomware recovery workflow. Simplify VMware Cloud DR ransomware recovery workflow operations with automatic install of Linux OS security sensors. When the Carbon Black cb_launcher tool is present in a VM snapshot, the ransomware recovery workflow will now leverage this utility to automatically install the Linux security sensor.
- Usability enhancements for guest file recovery. Enjoy an improved user experience when using VMware Cloud DR 's Guest File Restore feature due to several recent workflow improvements. The 'Recover guest files' dialog box now indicates how long large VMs will take to load. If you want to recover guest files for large VMs, you can select a snapshot for the VM, close the dialog box, and return later when the VM is ready. VMware Cloud DR saves the last 10 loaded snapshots in history, so once a snapshot is loaded, you can return to it.
- Pause failback before VM shutdown. Minimize production downtime by controlling the time at which VMs on the recovery SDDC will be shut down for failback operations. During failback, VMs must be powered off in the recovery SDDC, the last changes are replicated back and the VMs are powered back on, which can take considerable time for some larger VMs. With this new feature, you can configure a plan to pause for user confirmation before continuing the plan.
- Failback retry. Ensure failover will succeed with a single workflow action by configuring failback recovery plans to retry errors it encounters when the plan is run. At times a transient issue can cause the failover to display an error, and retrying the operation again will succeed.
- Detach recovery SDDC without deleting it. Preserve SDDCs and reduce future SDDC setup time by detaching recovery SDDCs without deleting them. Previously, when you detached a recovery SDDC from VMware Cloud DR, the SDDC was also deleted. Now, you can detach the SDDC and still use it on VMware Cloud.
- Default maximum of 5 concurrent protection group snapshot tasks increased to 10 snapshot tasks. Enjoy expanded system concurrency of taking snapshots with the new VCDR ability to run up to 10 concurrent snapshot tasks at a time. Previously, the maximum allowed concurrent snapshot tasks was 5.
- Easy access to Carbon Black Cloud security console during ransomware test and recovery. Allow users to more easily access detailed threat analysis data by accessing the Carbon Black Cloud security console from the integration configuration page. Previously, access to the Carbon Black Cloud console was only available in the ransomware recovery workflow's VM details page.
- New countries for ransomware recovery data processing. Align Carbon Black Cloud region locale to your preferred region by activating ransomware recovery services in an expanded region list. In addition to the US and UK, you can now select Europe, Japan, and Australia as Carbon Black Cloud service instance regions.
- Switch protection group type from high-frequency snapshots to standard-frequency snapshots. Enjoy flexible snapshot technology configuration with the ability to switch a high-frequency snapshot to a standard-frequency snapshot.
- Removal of Cloud-DR Proxy VM. As part of ongoing software optimization, VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery no longer uses the Cloud-DR Proxy VM for recovery SDDCs.

11 December 2023

New subscription purchasing options. VMware Cloud DR subscriptions can now be purchased directly without upfront SPP credits. You can work with your VMware sales rep to buy 1-year or 3-year prepaid subscriptions using SKUs from the price book facilitating immediate service consumption.

20 October 2023

VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts source protection (General Availability). Expand and simplify ransomware and disaster recovery for your multi-cloud environment by protecting your VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts workloads with VMware Cloud DR and VMware Ransomware Recovery.
New Supported AWS Regions. Protect and recover your workloads in the Asia Pacific (Melbourne) and Europe (Zurich) AWS regions.

18 August 2023

Protect workloads with 15 minute RPO (Preview). Protect your workloads using high-frequency snapshots to achieve RPOs as low as 15 minutes. You can view more details on the caveats and restrictions of this Preview feature.

17 July 2023

Run recovered VMs directly on the cloud file system. Enjoy faster failover times and more efficient failback by running VMs on the cloud file system. This option replaces vSAN storage requirements for specified DR Plans at failover time, thus eliminating the storage vMotion requirement when failing over workloads to the recovery SDDC. This reduces the total time needed to complete the failover step. Failback operations are also faster by eliminating data transfer from the recovery SDDC to the cloud file system. Find more details on this blog post.
Performance metrics for VMs running live on the cloud file system. Review cloud file system detailed performance metrics for VMs that are running live on the cloud file system. New performance metrics include: Input/Output Operations Per Second (IOPS), throughput (data transfer rate), latency, cache hit rate, and replication throughput.
AWS Direct Connect enhancements. Save configuration time when managing the AWS Direct Connect feature with the ability to edit the protected site CIDR block to unset the connection. You can also configure AWS Direct Connect for VIFs that terminate in an AWS region different from where VMware Cloud DR is deployed.
Google Cloud VMware Engine (GCVE) SDDC source protection (General Availability). Expand and simplify ransomware and disaster recovery for your multi-cloud environment by protecting your GCVE workloads with VMware Cloud DR and VMware Ransomware Recovery.
VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts source protection (Preview). Expand and simplify ransomware and disaster recovery for your multi-cloud environment by protecting your VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts workloads with VMware Cloud DR and VMware Ransomware Recovery. This feature reached General Availability on 20 October 2023.
Perform ransomware recovery on multiple VMs at the same time. Reduce ransomware recovery time by performing workflow operations on multiple VMs at a time. Examples include: starting VMs in validation, selecting snapshots, executing threat analysis and vulnerability scanning, staging VMs for recovery, and VM recovery.
Country selector for processing Ransomware Recovery data. Support data sovereignty requirements and decrease latency when enabling threat analysis services in VMware Cloud DR by choosing the geographical location where ransomware analysis data will be processed.
AWS Middle East (Bahrain). Protect and recover your workloads in the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) region.
Event and compliance check enhancements when deleting hosts or recovery SDDCs. Better understand recovery environment changes with enhanced recovery SDDC and SDDC host reporting:
- Deleting a recovery SDDC will log an event which you can view on the Monitoring page in VMware Cloud DR.
- Renaming or deleting a host on a recovery SDDC will be flagged in plan compliance reports for recovery plans that reference that SDDC.
Improved CLI for detaching high-frequency snapshots from VM. Reduce high-frequency snapshot administrative cycles when using the DRaaS Connector CLI for detaching high-frequency snapshots from VMs. This CLI has been consolidated to a single command that enables detaching high-frequency snapshots from individual or multiple VMs at a time.
Attach PCI-hardened SDDC as a protected site. PCI compliance support is improved with the ability to add a PCI-hardened SDDC as a VMware Cloud DR protected site. Adding a PCI-hardened SDDC requires creating a management gateway firewall rule to allow communication between the SDDC and VMware Cloud.
Scale down a 3 host Recovery SDDC to 2 host. Save configuration time by scaling down a 3 host recovery SDDC to 2 hosts within the VMware Cloud DR console.

24 March 2023

VMware Cloud DR can now protect VMs stored on VMware Cloud Flex Storage datastores that are attached to VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs. VMware Cloud Flex Storage support requires that the protected SDDC is in a separate AWS region from the recovery SDDC. Additionally, you can protect VMs stored on attached Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP datastores that are attached to VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs. In this case, the protected SDDC can be in the same AWS region as the recovery SDDC, but must be in a different AZ.

8 February 2023

VMware Cloud DR and VMware Cloud Flex Storage compatibility. VMware Cloud DR and VMware Cloud Flex Storage are now compatible, and you can have both services in the same organization as long as the deployments are in different regions.

25 January 2023

Multi-cloud DR for Google Cloud VMware Engine workloads (Preview). Protect your virtual machines running in Google Cloud VMware Engine across cloud providers using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. Deploy the DRaaS Connector on your Google Cloud VMware Engine clusters to start replicating the virtual machines running there to a VMware Cloud DR instance in a VMware Cloud on AWS region for multi-cloud disaster and ransomware protection.

15 December 2022

AWS Africa (Cape Town). Protect and recover your workloads in the AWS Africa (Cape Town) region.

18 October 2022

VMware Cloud DR feature add-on: VMware Ransomware Recovery. Recover from ransomware attacks in a predictable and secure manner and solve several recovery pain points:
- Establish a secure, on-demand Isolated Recovery Environment (IRE) which is used for restore point validation.
- Leverage a dedicated ransomware recovery workflow that facilitates a predictable recovery process and includes a recovery testing workflow which prepares teams to effectively respond to ransomware attacks.
- Using change rate and entropy rate metrics to find the best restore points for validation.
- Validate selected restore points with embedded Next Gen AV and Behavioral Monitoring, which ensures workloads are safe to restore to production.
- Simplified, push-button VM isolation levels help prevent reinfection.
AWS Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong). Protect and recover your workloads in the AWS Asia-Pacific (Hong Kong) region.
Disable high-frequency snapshots on a protection group. When high-frequency snapshot configuration is no longer desired, disable high-frequency snapshots with an easy-to-use CLI option.
DRaaS Connector Throughput Performance Check. Display logical and physical throughput between the DRaaS Connector and the cloud file system during replication and restore operations using a CLI option.
Support for i4i instance types: Enjoy improved compute, networking and application performance by adding i4i hosts in your recovery SDDC. For more information on the i4i instance type, refer to VMware Cloud documentation, found here. Due to limited regional availability of i4i instance types, please contact support to enable option to select i4i instance in the UI. For more information on currently supported regions, see the VMware Cloud on AWS Release Notes and this blog.

21 September 2022

VM term subscriptions. Plan ahead and receive lower prices when you purchase a 1-year or 3-year term subscription for protected Virtual Machines. The previous on-demand consumption model will continue to be supported for those who do not desire a subscription commitment. For more details, see the pricing page.
Complete on-demand mode. Consume VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery in a fully on-demand mode by foregoing the creation of term subscriptions. Data capacity and protected VM count will be metered hourly and billed monthly. A minimum of 10 TiB of data capacity per Orchestrator recovery region applies across a subscription region, irrespective of usage. As a result of enabling complete on-demand consumption of VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery, the previous Pilot mode option will be deprecated. For more details, see the pricing page.
2-tier support. Distributors can leverage a new VMware Cloud DR commerce option that enables making monthly payments associated with their Commitment Based Contract (CBC) with VMware. The distributor will be charged monthly by VMware based on the cumulative reseller and end customer consumption of VCDR. This new commerce option is a continuation of improvements aimed at simplifying partner ecosystem support surrounding self-service configuration of services and purchases of VMware Cloud DR subscriptions.
Global DR Console notifications. Get visibility into life cycle of Global DR Console components by receiving notifications regarding recovery region deployment, recovery region deactivation, request access, and subscription creation via a banner on the Global DR Console UI and email.
Seller mobility. Ensure that an up-to-date seller-of-record is set when creating a new VMware Cloud DR subscription by editing the Seller field. Editing of seller-of-record is possible when creating new VMware Cloud DR subscriptions in a subscription region that does not have any active subscriptions. Once a subscription is active, the seller-of-record will be fixed for all subsequent subscriptions created in that subscription region.

29 July 2022

Forward event log to vRealize Log Insight Cloud. Forward event logs to vRealize and analyze event logs related to protection, recoverability, and user interactions. You can forward VMware Cloud DR logs within a specific time range in the past, from a time starting in the past to the present, from a time in the past going forward, or from the present moving forward.
Export global VM list with Protection Group mappings. Export a global list to CSV that shows the VM name, the protected site where the VM originates, the site vCenter IP address, how many protection groups the VM belongs to, the names of those protection groups, and the directory path of the VM's VMX file on the protected site vCenter.
Protect up to 6000 VMs in a vCenter. VMware Cloud DR now supports even higher scale with support for protection of up to 6000 VMs. To enable such scale, you can now register a single vCenter to multiple protected sites. Protecting 6000 VMs in a single vCenter requires four separate protected sites, each with its own cloud file system (four cloud file systems).
View VM snapshot delta and change rate. View logical (delta) bytes transmitted and change rate during snapshot replication at the VM level. This information helps you understand the timing and magnitude of change that a VM might have undergone. This information can help find a clean VM copy prior to a ransomware attack or help troubleshoot and analyze workload patterns. Snapshots also report the VM change rate since the last snapshot of a VM was taken.
SLA Status and notifications. VMware Cloud DR SLA Status view now displays status for Protection and Recoverability. From a high level, you can view status for all items related to Protection, including protected sites, protection groups, snapshots, and cloud file systems. And, you can view the status of all things related to Recoverability, such as DR Plans, cloud file systems, and recovery SDDCs. Additionally, when status needs attention, the dashboard displays a banner indicating the reason for a change in status and provides a link to the item in question.
Seamlessly switch between public internet and AWS Direct Connect. Previously, once you chose a connectivity option for a protected site, either AWS Direct Connect or Public internet, you could not change the setting. Now you can switch between these two connectivity options for a protected site.

13 April 2022

Support for AWS Direct Connect Private VIF. VMware Cloud DR now supports Amazon Web Services(AWS) Direct Connect (DX) private virtual interface (VIF) for on-premises protected site networks. AWS Direct Connect provides a dedicated network connection between your on premises data center and AWS services, which allows for high bandwidth and a more secure connection. To learn more, click here.
Additional details added to events list. View detailed information for a selected event underneath the events list including information such as start time, end time, and for snapshot jobs, the number of VMs in snapshot and the amount of snapshot data transferred. Also, you can open the snapshot log to view all events for the related snapshot to find any failed or missed snapshot replications.
Enhancements to protection group page. View all events related to a protection group in a single place under a dedicated tab for events in the protection group page. Additionally, the protection group list now shows the health status, logical storage capacity, last snapshot information and access to the snapshot log for each protection group.
Snapshot usability enhancements. Edit snapshots in a protection group to change a snapshot's name and retention schedule. Also multi-select multiple snapshots and edit all of their retention schedules in a bulk operation.
Default Protection Group schedule optimized for Ransomware Recovery. When creating or editing a protection group, get a recommended 60 day snapshot retention schedule to ensure effective ransomware recovery.
Enhanced compliance checks. DR Plan compliance checks now provide flags about a plan's protection group health and indicate if any VMs in the snapshot were not snapshotted according to the protection group configuration.
Reuse saved settings for DRaaS connector deployment. Easily deploy additional DRaaS connectors by reusing existing settings from previous connector deployment.
REST APIs for monitoring (Preview). Build automation by leveraging VMware Cloud DR public REST APIs to retrieve information about protected VMs, protected sites, protection groups, snapshots, cloud file system and recovery SDDCs. REST APIs have been released in preview and future releases of REST APIs will not be backwards compatible with this release.
Network design simplifications. Simplify your DR network design by only using Port 443 for communication between DRaaS Connector and Orchestrator. For latest network port diagram, please click here.
Protect workloads on sites with stretched clusters. Protect your vSphere workloads on sites with stretched cluster enabled using VMware Cloud DR. The protected site could be an on-premises data center or VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC with stretched cluster enabled.

6 January 2022

PCI DSS AOC/ROC. VMware Cloud DR is now compliant with hardening requirements for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Please refer to our Shared Responsibility Model to review details of security considerations and implementations. You can download our PCI DSS Attestation of Compliance on VMware Cloud Trust Center or reach out to your sales representative for our Report of Compliance.

20 December 2021

SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3. We have obtained our SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 Reports of Compliance. You can download our SOC 3 report on VMware Cloud Trust Center or reach out to your sales representative for our SOC 2 Type 2 report. VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery TM SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3: We have obtained our SOC 2 Type 2 and SOC 3 Reports of Compliance. You can download our SOC 3 report on VMware Cloud Trust Center or reach out to your sales representative for our SOC 2 Type 2 report.

17 December 2021

Global Console. View, activate and deactivate all your VMware Cloud DR deployments from a single UI. The VMware Cloud DR Global Console offers SaaS-simple workflows to deploy in new recovery regions and create new subscriptions. Provide role-based access control to Global Console with new service roles. You can find more details about service roles in the documentation.
Multi-region support. Protect your workloads to multiple recovery regions each with its own Orchestrator and cloud file systems in the same VMware Cloud Organization. Seamlessly switch between various recovery regions from VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery UI.

6 December 2021

File-level Recovery. Leverage VMware Cloud DR for operational restores and ransomware recovery by extracting guest files from an older snapshot of the VM. Use the VMware Cloud DR UI to browse the guest file system across any snapshot, and download a specific set of files or folders as a zip archive. See more details, see Recover Guest Files.
Application consistent snapshots with OS quiescing. Protection groups now support quiesced snapshots, which ensure that a snapshot represents a consistent state of the guest file systems of VMs in the group. From a quiesced snapshot you can restore the VM and its application to the same state as before a snapshot was taken. For more information, see App-consistent Snapshots with Quiescing.
Protect workloads running on VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC with low RPOs. Protect your workloads running on VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC using high-frequency snapshots to achieve RPOs as low as 30 minutes. The protected VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC should be version 1.16 or higher.
Convert protection groups from standard-frequency snapshots to high-frequency snapshots. Seamlessly convert protection groups to use high-frequency snapshots and achieve RPOs as low as 30 minutes without requiring a re-seeding of the VM data. Once a protection group is converted to use high-frequency snapshots, it cannot be reverted back.
IP address access list. Enhance the security of your DR environment by adding IP addresses and/or CIDR blocks to an allow-list so that access to the VMware Cloud DR scale-out cloud file system, orchestrator, and UI is only permitted from those IP addresses.
Custom user for protected vCenter registration. Register the vCenter in your on-premises protected site using a custom vCenter user with the minimal set of permissions required by the DRaaS Connector for protection and replication operations. Manually update the user to add other permissions required for failback only when necessary. Now use the VMware Cloud DR UI for this registration method. Use a human-readable custom script to create the vCenter user and role with minimal privileges.
In-product feedback. Provide instant feedback on your experience using VMware Cloud DR from within the UI.
Connectivity checker. Test communication between the connector and the VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery Orchestrator, cloud file system, and Auto-support server, and the protected site vCenter and ESXi hosts by using the DRaaS Connector CLI.
Improved replication progress reporting. Monitor the real time progress of snapshot replication in greater detail with the Tasks list, which shows percentage of data being transferred, the amount of data being transferred, the data transfer rate during and after the task. You can also view replication throughput from the Topology map for in-progress snapshot tasks.
VMware HCX interop. Migrate workloads using VMware HCX to VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs while having them protected with VMware Cloud DR.
Protect workloads running on vSphere 7.0 update 3. Protect workloads running on sites that are on vSphere 7.0 Update 3.
Multiple 2-host clusters in recovery SDDC. Optimize recovery infrastructure costs by adding a 2-host secondary cluster to your 2-host pilot light cluster.
Scale up from 1-host to 2-host. Scale up from a non-durable 1-host SDDC to a durable 2-host recovery SDDC (on-demand option). This is ideal for customers running evaluation using a 1-host pilot-light SDDC who then want to upgrade their pilot-light SDDC for permanent usage.
AWS Asia-Pacific (Osaka) region: Protect and recover your workloads in AWS Asia-Pacific (Osaka) region.

14 October 2021

ISO 27001/27017/27018: VMware Cloud DR has achieved the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) certificate, supporting 27001, 27017, and 27018 standards. Please visit the VMware Cloud Trust Center to learn more and download ISO certificates.

5 October 2021

Purchase through Managed Service Providers (MSP). Purchase VMware Cloud DR through your preferred Managed Service Provider (MSP) and use Cloud Partner Navigator (CPN) to onboard and access the service. Your MSP will handle the billing, support, and activation of VMware Cloud DR deployment for you.

2 September 2021

30-minute RPO. Confidently protect your most critical virtual machines running on your on-premises datacenter with VMware Cloud DR by configuring protection schedules with Recovery Point Objectives (RPOs) as low as 30 minutes, so that the risk of data loss from unforeseen DR events is minimized. VMware vCenter Server and ESXi on the source site should be upgraded to 7.0 Update 2c-vcdr to enable 30-minute RPOs. See documentation on caveats for this feature.

31 August 2021

Purchase online using credit card. Get started quickly with your VMware Cloud DR evaluation by purchasing online using a credit card as your payment method.

4 August 2021

Bring your existing recovery SDDC. Maximize your investment in VMware Cloud on AWS by using an existing SDDC created from the VMware Cloud console, for recovery with VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. Clusters and hosts added to VMware Cloud DR from the VMware Cloud console are automatically recognized by VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery.
User actions added to events list. View a log of user actions such as log in, log out, configuration changes, and DR Plan executions in the Monitor view of the VMware Cloud DR UI. The user ID and the source IP address are shown for each item in the Events list, enhancing your ability to audit user actions.
Protect workloads running in VMware Cloud Foundation. Expand your DR strategy to include protection of your virtual machines running in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF).
DR protection for up to 2500 VMs per-AWS region. Protect larger environments by replicating up to 2500 virtual machines to a single AWS region in a VMware Cloud organization. You might need to split 2500 VMs across multiple VMware Cloud DR cloud file systems for larger protected capacity scale. See VMware Configuration Maximum tool for operational scale limits of VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery.
Replication throughput in UI. See the network throughput of the replication data traffic between the source site and the target VMware Cloud DR cloud file system. The throughput can be viewed in the Dashboard Topology map and on the Protected Sites page in the VMware Cloud DR UI.
AWS Europe (Milan) region. You can now protect and recover your vSphere virtual machines in the AWS Europe (Milan) region.

27 July 2021

Disaster Recovery in VMware Cloud Launchpad. Accelerate your Disaster Recovery implementation with step-by-step guidance, relevant tools and a rich set of resources using VMware Cloud Launchpad. Click on "Learn More" under "Disaster Recovery" to navigate to launch your DR journey. This experience is available to everyone without requiring login to VMware Cloud.

16 July 2021

Pilot deployment for AWS Seller of Record. You can now try VMware Cloud DR as a "pilot" before committing to a term subscription, even when you have purchased it with AWS as seller of record. Pilot deployments are charged at a fixed hourly rate and include 5 TiB of protected capacity and 25 protected virtual machines. Any usage beyond these limits will incur charges at the applicable per-TiB overage and per-VM on-demand rates. Once you are done with your evaluation, create a 1-year or 3-year committed term subscription to seamlessly convert this to a standard deployment and continue using the service. Please refer to the VMware Cloud DR pricing page for additional details.

23 June 2021

Intra-region DR in VMware Cloud on AWS. Protect your VMs running in VMware Cloud on AWS to a designated recovery Availability Zone within the same AWS region, ensuring your data stays in the same region even after recovery. See here for more information.
Cloud File System deployment wizard. Deploy the Cloud File System for replication and recovery using a self-service wizard in the VMware Cloud DR UI. See here for more information.
SOC 2, Type 1 Compliance. System & Organization Control (SOC) Reports are independent, third-party examination reports that demonstrate how VMware Cloud DR achieves key compliance controls and objectives to meet SOC 2, Type 1 requirements. The purpose of these reports is to help you and your auditors understand the controls established to support operations and compliance.
Avoid full re-sync even when CBT is deactivated on the protected site. Fall back to a fingerprint-based method to efficiently calculate the delta when Change Block Tracking (CBT) is deactivated on the protected site. This helps to avoid a re-transfer of all the virtual machine data and reduces interruptions to DR protection.
Auto-exclude management virtual machines from protection groups. vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) VMs, DRaaS Connector VMs and VMware Cloud on AWS management VMs are now automatically excluded from protection groups.
Capacity limit monitoring. View the currently protected storage capacity relative to the maximum capacity limit of the Cloud File System. This metric is displayed as a percentage value in the cloud file system information panel. See here for more information.
Usability enhancement. The global summary page now shows number of running DR plans.

7 May 2021

CSA Trusted Cloud Provider.

VMware Cloud DR is now a Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Trusted Cloud Provider and registered as a Security, Trust, Assurance and Risk (STAR) Level One service. CSA is an organization dedicated to defining best practices to help ensure a secure cloud computing environment. STAR Registry is a publicly accessible registry that documents the security and privacy controls. You can find the VMware Cloud DR STAR Register listing, including the downloadable CAIQ here.

27 April 2021

The following new features are available or in preview for the new release:

Definitions

Available: Feature now available for use by applicable customers. May not be available in all AWS regions.

Preview: Feature released in preview to gather feedback. May not be available to all applicable customers or in all AWS regions*.

*We cannot guarantee that features marked as ‘Preview’ will become available within any particular time frame or at all. Make your purchase decisions only on the basis of features that are Available.

Pilot deployment. Try out VMware Cloud DR as a "pilot" before committing to a term subscription. Pilot. deployments are charged at a fixed hourly rate and include 5 TiB of protected capacity and 25 protected virtual machines. Any usage beyond these limits will incur charges at the applicable per-TiB overage and per-VM on-demand rates. Once you are done with your evaluation, create a 1-year or 3-year committed term subscription to seamlessly convert this to a standard deployment and continue using the service. Please refer to the VMware Cloud DR pricing page for additional details.
Monthly payment option for term subscriptions. Get additional payment flexibility with a new option to pay for 1-year or 3-year committed term subscriptions in monthly installment rather than paying for it all upfront. Please refer to the VMware Cloud DR pricing page for additional details.
Faster replication. Achieve faster initial backup ingest and higher steady state replication throughput through several optimizations of the Scale-out Cloud File System and the DRaaS Connector. Improvements include parallel processing of multiple protection groups, improved selection of optimal Connector for remote sites, and automatic tuning of certain parameters.
Faster replication. Achieve faster initial backup ingest and higher steady state replication throughput through several optimizations of the Scale-out Cloud File System and the DRaaS Connector. Improvements include parallel processing of multiple protection groups, improved selection of optimal Connector for remote sites, and automatic tuning of certain parameters.
Enhanced recovery performance. An accelerated cache within the Scale-out Cloud File System now enables enhanced performance of your recovered virtual machines and faster completion of the Storage vMotion to VMware Cloud on AWS. This functionality is fully managed by the service with no need for user configuration.
Cancellation option for replication in-progress. Exercise greater control over your ongoing protection operations with the ability to cancel a running snapshot task from the VMware Cloud DR UI.
Direct Connect (Public VIF) for replication and failback traffic. Use AWS Direct Connect with public virtual interfaces (Public VIF) to carry replication, failback, and management traffic between your on-premises protected site and VMware Cloud DR over a high-bandwidth, low-latency network connection. For more details, please refer to this VMware Cloud DR documentation page.
Support for protected sites running vSphere 7.0 Update 2. You can now protect virtual machines in sites running vSphere 7.0 Update 2. Refer to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix for the latest information on interoperability of VMware Cloud DR with other VMware solutions.
Choose seller of record for Recovery SDDC. Optimize your cloud spend by choosing between VMware or AWS as the seller of record while deploying your Recovery SDDC, regardless of the seller of record for VMware Cloud DR itself. For more details on your purchase options, please refer to the VMware Cloud DR documentation.
Custom user for protected vCenter registration (*Preview). Register the vCenter in your on-premises protected site using a custom vCenter user with the minimal set of permissions required by the DRaaS Connector for protection and replication operations. Manually update the user to add other permissions required for failback only when necessary.
Run recovered VMs off cloud filesystem (*Preview). Achieve faster failover times and failback sooner by recovering your virtual machines directly on the Scale Out Cloud File System and skipping the storage migration to VMware Cloud on AWS. The virtual machine storage continues to be served from the cloud filesystem. Before using this feature, please consult the Caveats and Limitations section below.

23 March 2021

Inter-region DR in VMware Cloud on AWS. Protect your virtual machines running in VMware Cloud on AWS across cloud regions using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. Deploy the DRaaS Connector on your VMware Cloud on AWS clusters to start replicating the virtual machines running there to a VMware Cloud DR instance in another VMware Cloud on AWS region. Use VMware Cloud DR's orchestrated recovery capabilities to perform DR tests and failovers in a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC in the target region.
2-host pilot light and recovery SDDCs. Lower your steady state DR costs by deploying an i3.metal 2-host VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC to serve as a pilot light cluster for VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. For DR tests and failovers, scale up the pilot light SDDC into a full-sized recovery site by adding more clusters to it. After the test or failover, scale back down to the 2-host footprint by removing the additional recovery clusters.
New AWS regions. You can now protect and recover your vSphere virtual machines in the following additional AWS regions: Asia Pacific (Seoul), Europe (Stockholm), and South America (São Paulo).
Support for protected sites running vSphere 7.0 Update 1. You can now protect virtual machines in sites running vSphere 7.0 Update 1. Refer to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix for the latest information on interoperability of VMware Cloud DR with other VMware solutions.
Multi-instance support for increased scalability. Deploy multiple instances of the scale-out cloud file system and multiple recovery SDDCs in the target region to protect a large volume of virtual machine data and a large number of virtual machines. Orchestrate company-wide DR testing and failovers from a single, federated VMware Cloud DR management console spanning across all instances.
Multi-instance support for increased scalability. Deploy multiple instances of the scale-out cloud file system and multiple recovery SDDCs in the target region to protect a large volume of virtual machine data and a large number of virtual machines. Orchestrate company-wide DR testing and failovers from a single, federated VMware Cloud DR management console spanning across all instances.
HIPAA BAA. A HIPAA Business Associate Agreement (BAA) is available for VMware Cloud DR to help healthcare organizations stay in compliance while ensuring DR protection of their critical applications.
Enhanced replication resiliency. Benefit from increased resiliency of the replication process against transient network outages and temporary unavailability of the cloud file system due to cloud upgrades. The progress of a replication job is now saved periodically so that it can continue from that point onwards when the transient situation is resolved.

21 January 2021

New AWS region. You can now protect and recover your vSphere virtual machines in the Asia Pacific (Tokyo) AWS region.

17 December 2020

New AWS regions. You can now protect and recover your vSphere virtual machines in the following additional AWS regions: Europe (Ireland), Europe (Paris), and Asia Pacific (Mumbai).
Support for I3en hosts in Recovery SDDC. You can now provision I3en hosts in your Recovery SDDC and use them for recovery operations.
Support for multiple vSphere clusters in Recovery SDDC. You can now add multiple vSphere clusters to your Recovery SDDC to increase your recovery capacity.
Faster recovery. Failover now happens faster as virtual machines are powered on in parallel in batch sizes that scale with the number of hosts in your Recovery SDDC.
Use vSphere tags to configure protection groups. You can now define which virtual machines should be members of a protection group based on their vSphere tags. When backing up, any virtual machines with the tags you specify are dynamically associated with the protection group and included in the snapshot.
Preserve vSphere tags on VMs upon Recovery. The recovery process now preserves tags on recovered VMs that were associated with those VMs on the original protected site. The tags and their associated categories must be pre-configured on the recovery SDDC for successful failover.
Data transfer optimizations for failback and VM restore. In situations where incremental data transfer based on snapshot data is not possible during a failback or VM restore operation, VMware Cloud DR now leverages the VM content that already exists on the restore destination to speed up the failback or VM restore.
Consistent handling of time zones in UI. All timestamps shown in the UI now display using the user’s browser time zone setting. Protection Group schedules are still based on the protected site’s time zone. When this time zone is different from the user’s browser time zone setting, the UI indicates the protected site's time zone for reference.
Show progress of Recovery SDDC deployment and snapshot replication. The UI now provides progress status for Recovery SDDC deployment and snapshot replication, listing all running and completed tasks associated with these operations.
Support for protected sites running vSphere 7.0. You can now protect virtual machines in sites running vSphere 7.0. Refer to the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix for the latest information on interoperability of VMware Cloud DR with other VMware solutions.

20 October 2020 - Introducing VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery

Protect your vSphere virtual machines (VMs) to the cloud and recover them to VMware Cloud on AWS using VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery. Based on the scale-out cloud file system technology developed at Datrium, VMware Cloud DR helps lower the cost of disaster recovery by storing backups in cloud storage, and allows you to pay for recovery host capacity only when you want to conduct a disaster recovery test or perform a recovery.

VMware Cloud on AWS makes rapid recovery at scale possible with its "live mount" capability, which enables fast power-on of the recovered VMs in VMware Cloud on AWS without a long data rehydration process. A fully-featured SaaS-simple disaster recovery orchestrator is built-in to minimize the need for manual effort during recovery. The service is tightly integrated with VMware Cloud on AWS for efficient recovery and a consistent operational experience without error-prone VM format conversions.

For more information, visit our blog and FAQ.

Features of VMware Cloud DR include:

Available in US West (Oregon), US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (N. California), Europe (London), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Canada (Central), Asia Pacific (Singapore), and Europe (Frankfurt).
Option to maintain a small, pre-provisioned "pilot light" SDDC to run foundational components and further speed recovery.
Continuous disaster recovery health checks every 30 minutes for increased reliability.
End-to-end and daily data integrity checks of backup copies.
Deep history of immutable snapshots for recovery from ransomware attacks.
Audit-ready, detailed disaster recovery reports.
Delta-based failback.