Because the protected and recovery sites are often in different locations, some components on the protected site can be of a different type to their counterparts on the recovery site.

VMware Site Recovery is compatible with N-1 version of Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication on the paired on-premises site. For example, if the current version of Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication on VMware Site Recovery is 8.6, the supported versions for the paired on-premises site is 8.5 and later.

VMware Site Recovery is compatible with N-2 version of VMware vSphere and ESXi on the paired on-premises site. For example, if the current version of VMware vSphere on VMware Site Recovery is 8.0, the supported versions for the paired on-premises site go back to VMware vSphere 6.7 and ESXi 6.7.

Although components can be different on each site, you must use the types and versions of these components that Site Recovery Manager supports.

For more information about compatibility, see VMware Product Interoperability Matrices.

Table 1. Heterogeneity of Site Recovery Manager Components Between Sites
Component Heterogeneous or Identical Installations
Site Recovery Manager Server Must be a supported version on both sites.
vSphere Replication Must be a supported version on both sites. The vSphere Replication version must be compatible with the Site Recovery Manager version and the vCenter Server version.
vCenter Server Appliance or vCenter Server for Windows instance Can be different on each site. You can run a vCenter Server Appliance on one site and a vCenter Server for Windows instance on the other site.
Site Recovery Manager database Can be different on each site. You can use different versions of the same type of database on each site.
Host operating system of the Site Recovery Manager Server installation Can be different on each site. You can run different versions of the host operating system and the host operating system can run in different locales on each site.
Host operating system of the vCenter Server installation Can be different on each site. You can run different versions of the host operating system and the host operating system can run in different locales on each site.