If a virtual machine depends on services that run on another virtual machine in the same protection group, you can configure a dependency between the virtual machines. By configuring a dependency, you can ensure that the virtual machines start on the recovery site in the correct order. Dependencies are only valid if the virtual machines have the same priority.

Caution: Virtual machines that are eligible for stretched storage migration are not migrated if they depend on VMs that are non-eligible for stretched storage migration.

When a recovery plan runs, VMware Live Site Recovery starts the virtual machines that other virtual machines depend on before it starts the virtual machines with the dependencies. If VMware Live Site Recovery cannot start a virtual machine that another virtual machine depends on, the recovery plan continues with a warning. You can only configure dependencies between virtual machines that are in the same recovery priority group. If you configure a virtual machine to depend on a virtual machine that is in a lower priority group, VMware Live Site Recovery overrides the dependency and first starts the virtual machine that is in the higher priority group.

If you remove a protection group that contains the dependent virtual machine from the recovery plan the status of the protection group is set to Not in this plan in the dependencies for the virtual machine with the dependency. If the configured virtual machine has a different priority than the virtual machine that it depends on, the status of the dependent virtual machine is set to Lower Priority or Higher Priority.

Prerequisites

Verify that the virtual machine with the dependency and the virtual machine that it depends on are in the same recovery plan and in the same recovery priority group.

Procedure

  1. In the vSphere Client, click Site Recovery > Open Site Recovery.
  2. On the Live Site Recovery home tab, select a site pair, and click View Details.
  3. Click the Recovery Plans tab, click a recovery plan, and click Virtual Machines.
  4. Right-click a virtual machine that depends on one or more other virtual machines and click Configure Recovery.
  5. Expand VM Dependencies.
  6. From the drop-down menu, select View all.
  7. Select one or more virtual machines from the list of all virtual machines in the selected recovery plan.
    The selected virtual machines are added to the list of dependencies.
  8. Verify the virtual machines in the VM Dependencies list are on and verify the status of the dependencies is OK.
  9. (Optional) To remove a dependency, select View VM Dependencies from the drop-down menu, select a virtual machine from the list of virtual machines that this virtual machine depends on, and click Remove.
  10. Click OK.