VMware Site Recovery | 09 JUL 2024

VMware Site Recovery Manager 9.0.1 | 25 JUN 2024 | Build 24035875 | Release Notes

VMware vSphere Replication 9.0.1 | 25 JUN 2024 | Build 24037980 | Release Notes

VMware Site Recovery Manger 8.8.0.3 | 08 FEB 2024 | Build 23263427 | Release Notes

VMware vSphere Replication 8.8.0.3 | 08 FEB 2024 | Build 23263438 | Release Notes

VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for VMware Site Recovery Manager 9.0.1 | 25 JUN 2024 | Build 24035875 | Release Notes

VMware Aria Operations Management Pack for vSphere Replication 9.0.1 | 25 JUN 2024 | Build 23973496 | Release Notes

Check for additions and updates to these release notes.

What's New July 09, 2024

  • Interoperability with vSphere 8.0 Update 3

  • Maximum number of virtual machines, configured for replication is 5000

    Enhanced vSphere Replication 9.0.1 increases the number of virtual machines that you can configure for replication to 5000.

  • Enhanced Replication Mapping - reporting

    A ping and latency measurement is performed from the source to the target host which tests for connectivity and latency issues. A test operation is performed, reports if there are any issues, and provides insight into potential connectivity issues between the cluster mappings.There are three ways you can initiate health monitoring:

    • During the scale-out replication configuration process, prior to configuring the replication.

    • Scheduled on a periodic basis.

    • User-initiated - you can initiate health monitoring on demand.

  • UI Enhancements

    The user interface now provides information related to the disks/redo logs consolidation and overall progress at the target site, allowing users to make informed decisions.

  • vSphere Cluster Services 2.0 Interoperability

  • Proxy Support for Update Repository for the on-premises site

    With Site Recovery Manager 9.0.1 you can configure an HTTP proxy for the Update Repository. See How do I configure an HTTP proxy for the Update Repository.

What's New April 17, 2024

  • End of Availability for VMware Site Recovery

    Broadcom is announcing the End of Availability (EoA) of VMware Site Recovery for VMware Cloud on AWS on May 1, 2024. After this date, VMware Site Recovery will no longer be available for purchase or deployment. The End of Support (EoS) date for VMware Site Recovery is May 1, 2027. After this date, the product will no longer be supported.

    Next Steps: 

    At the end of your existing contract, we recommend moving to VMware Live Recovery. Please contact your VMware by Broadcom Account Manager for assistance with transition planning.

What's New November 6, 2023

  • Expanding regional availability

    VMware Site Recovery now supports the AWS Asia Pacific (Hyderabad) region. VMware Site Recovery is now available in 24 Global AWS Regions. 

What's New October 19, 2023

  • Expanding regional availability

    VMware Site Recovery now supports the AWS Middle East (Bahrain) region. VMware Site Recovery is now available in 23 Global AWS Regions. 

  • Recovery plan queuing support for more than 10 recovery plans

    With the enhanced recovery plan queuing option, as the recovery plans complete, additional ones in the queue will be automatically executed in sequence to a maximum of 10 concurrent plans.  This provides greater flexibility so that a DR test can be enabled by an application team, for example, to conduct their DR test when needed and not be tied to a company wide test.

  • Expose the DR REST APIs through VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator plug-in

    Introducing the end-to-end support of Site Recovery Manager REST APIs through the DR REST plug-in for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator. Customers will benefit by automating manual workflows to monitor, protect, manage appliances and run recovery plans. For more information, see DR REST plug-in for VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator Release Notes.

  • VMware Site Recovery support for vSAN Express Storage Architecture

    Introducing VMware Site Recovery support for VMware Cloud on AWS with vSAN Express Storage Architecture that delivers enterprise-grade performance. With the launch of vSAN Express Storage Architecture, VMware Site Recovery offers optimized performance, with high resilience for your disaster recovery needs.

  • Empowering Seamless Cross-Cloud Disaster Recovery

    VMware Site Recovery/VMware Site Recovery Manager's unified cross-cloud support offering a unified platform to manage disaster recovery across a diverse set of cloud providers including AWS, AVS, OCVS, and GCVE enabling seamless cross-cloud resilience.

    Key tenets of cross-cloud support:

    • Interoperability: VMware Site Recovery Manager's cross-cloud capabilities provide the agility to orchestrate disaster recovery processes across different cloud providers. This interoperability empowers businesses to tailor their cloud environment choices to specific workloads, while maintaining consistent recovery strategies.

    • Simplified Management: By offering a unified interface for disaster recovery operations, Site Recovery Manager significantly reduces complexity. IT teams can now manage and monitor recovery plans seamlessly across various clouds and hybrid environments, facilitating efficient resource utilization and reducing administrative overhead.

    • Enhanced Resilience: Cross-cloud support ensures that businesses are not tied to a single cloud provider for their disaster recovery needs. This enhances resilience by mitigating risks associated with provider-specific outages, service disruptions, or geographical limitations.

    • Cost Optimization: Multi-cloud strategies enable cost optimization by leveraging competitive pricing models and taking advantage of cloud-specific features. VMware Site Recovery Manager's cross-cloud support aligns with this approach, enabling businesses to balance performance, cost, and recovery objectives effectively.

    • Compliance and Governance: Businesses operating across multiple clouds often face complex regulatory environments. VMware Site Recovery Manager's unified disaster recovery management helps maintain compliance by enforcing consistent recovery practices and data protection measures.

    • Innovation Acceleration: Cross-cloud support frees businesses from vendor lock-in, encouraging innovation by facilitating the adoption of cutting-edge cloud services from different providers without compromising on recovery capabilities.

    VMware Site Recovery Manager's evolution to support cross-cloud environments is a pivotal step in addressing the dynamic needs of modern enterprises. This shift underscores VMware's commitment to empowering businesses with resilient, flexible, and efficient disaster recovery solutions that align with their multi-cloud strategies.

What's New July 28, 2023

  • Expanding regional availability:

    VMware Site Recovery now supports activation on SDDCs provisioned in the Europe (Zurich) and Asia Pacific (Melbourne) region of VMware Cloud on AWS.

What's New May 02, 2023

  • VMware Site Recovery with enhanced replication capability

    These features will significantly improve the performance, scalability and functionally to meet the strategic needs of our enterprise customers. The key enhancements are:

    • 1 Minute RPO: With the redesign of the replication architecture, VMware Site Recovery now supports RPOs (Recovery Point Objectives) as low as 1 minute, down from 5 mins. Having a 1 minute RPO is important for business critical applications, which demand higher RPOs.

    • Auto-scaling and Load Balancing: VMware Site Recovery now supports automated load balancing which distributes replicated VMs across resources for optimal performance. In addition, VMware Site Recovery supports automated scale-out which utilizes provisioned ESXi hosts and automatically adds them for additional replication capacity.

    Note: These features require Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication versions 8.7 and later for both the source and the target site, and VMware Cloud on AWS Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) version 1.22 or later.

What's New April 27, 2023

  • Additional REST APIs for VMware Site Recovery:

    Customers will be able to use public RESTFUL APIs to monitor DR operations, set up protection and recover workloads using VMware Site Recovery. With a comprehensive set of APIs, customers will be able to build end to end automation to configure and manage DR at scale. For more information, see the blog.

What's New February 14, 2023

  • VMware Site Recovery now supports Cloud-to-Cloud DR on VMware Cloud on GovCloud

    With the new Cloud-to-Cloud disaster recovery on VMware Cloud on GovCloud, you can conduct cross-region DR operations leveraging the VMware Site Recovery Manager capabilities running on VMware Cloud on GovCloud East and West regions as a failover target or source site. Some of the key benefits of this cross-cloud DR functionality are:

    • Improved reliability: With Active-Active configuration between the source and target site, you get low overall RPO/RTO for protected workloads.

    • Reduced operational complexity: Unified cross-cloud DR operations under one umbrella eliminate DR risk and complexity.

    • Better resiliency: Cloud-to-Cloud DR minimizes the risk of potential infrastructure outages.

    For more information, see VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud(US).

What's New December 15, 2022

  • VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts available now

    VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts enables customers to protect their workloads from disaster. VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts is a fully-managed, subscription based service. For more information about the operational limits of VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts, see Operational Limits of VMware Site Recovery.

    VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts is the VMware and AWS jointly engineered on-premises as-a-service solution that integrates VMware’s enterprise-class Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) software for compute (vSphere), storage (vSAN), and networking (NSX) along with vCenter Management, which runs on next-generation, dedicated Amazon Nitro-based EC2 bare-metal instances provisioned in AWS Outposts. As fully managed service, VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts relieves IT teams from the burden of managing infrastructure and empowers them to focus on business innovation by bringing the cloud operating model on-premises. For more information, see VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts Overview.

What's New October 31, 2022

  • User experience improvements with Site Recovery Manager 8.6 and vSphere Replication 8.6:

    • Health Check Report

    • DR protection of up to 4000  virtual machines per vCenter Server instance with vSphere 8.0 and later and VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC version 1.20 and later.

    • In-product feedback: VMware Site Recovery user interface introduces an in-product feedback option to enable you provide real-time rating and comments on key workflows and features.

    • Support for Rest APIs

    • I4i instance support in addition to i3i and i3en

What's New August 31, 2022

  • Available Now: Cross-cloud DR between VMware Cloud on AWS and Azure VMware Solution

    Customers can conduct cross-cloud DR operations leveraging the capabilities of VMware Site Recovery Manager (version 8.5+) running on Azure VMware Solution and VMware Site Recovery running on VMware Cloud on AWS as a failover target or source site.

    Some of the key benefits of this cross-cloud DR functionality are:

    1. Improved reliability: With Active-Active configuration between source and target site, customers get low overall RPO/RTO for protected workloads.

    2. Reduced operational complexity: Unified cross-cloud DR operations under one umbrella eliminates DR risk and complexity

    3. Better resiliency: With sparse regional coverage provided by different cloud providers, cross cloud DR minimizes the risk of potential infrastructure outages.

    4. Better data sovereignty and compliance: Due to data sovereignty and compliance reasons, if customers do not want to move data to a DR site in another geographical location and if the cloud provider has only region in that geography, customers can use cross-cloud DR to keep DR replicas in a DR site (in the same geography) provided by another cloud provider.

    Note: The source site and target site are configured in Active-Active configuration where both sites can host the workloads and protect workloads between both sites.

What's New April 12, 2022

  • VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC available now

    VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC enables customers to protect their workloads from disaster. VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC is a fully-managed, subscription based service, providing local cloud service in customers’ on-premises datacenter, preferred co-lo and edge locations. Please, see the VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on Dell EMC Installation and Configuration documentation to learn how to deploy and manage.

What's New November 22, 2021

  • PCI DSS certification for VMware Site Recovery

    VMware Site Recovery received the highest level of PCI certification (PCI DSS Level 1 provider status). By being certified as PCI DSS compliant level 1 service provider, VMware Site Recovery service operates in compliance with PCI DSS compliant security measures and controls, thereby potentially addressing the needs of a broad range of customers and workloads that need to store, process, or transmit cardholder or sensitive authentication data. PCI compliance will be enabled in the AWS regions that support VMware Cloud on AWS where SDDCs are configured for compliance hardening for PCI. For more information, see Available AWS Regions.

What's New November 18, 2021

  • User experience improvements:

    • Support for changing the storage policy of replica disks

    • Report the quiescing status of virtual machines in the UI

    • Show replication target site name in the configure replication validation page

    • Site Recovery UI, Config UI, and Site Recovery vSphere Client plug-in now support Clarity 5.1

    • UI Data grid redesign to support showing more detail with clusters with multiple datastores

  • DR protection for up to 3000 VMs per SDDC

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports replication of up to 3,000 virtual machines to a single target VMware Cloud™ on AWS Software Defined Data Center (SDDC), allowing you to protect larger environments. To protect up to 3,000 virtual machines, Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication must be of version 8.4 or later. For more details, see Operational Limits of Site Recovery Manager in the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

What's New October 28, 2021

  • New Region: Asia Pacific (Osaka)

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports activation on SDDCs provisioned in the Asia Pacific (Osaka) region of VMware Cloud™ on AWS.

What's New October 14, 2021

  • VMware Transit Connect

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports using VMware Transit Connect to get high-speed and resilient connections between VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs across different AWS regions for DR replication traffic.

What's New August 4, 2021

  • New Region: Europe (Milan)

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports activation on SDDCs provisioned in the Europe (Milan) region of VMware Cloud™ on AWS. 

What's New April 14, 2021

  • Faster re-protect

    Re-protect your virtual machines significantly faster after a planned recovery. The re-protection operation is especially quick when run shortly after the planned recovery such that the delta between the data on the source and recovery sites is not large. VMware Site Recovery now automatically starts tracking changes on the recovered virtual machine after failover. Only those changes are then replicated to the original protected site when re-protect is run and checksum comparisons can be completely avoided. This capability requires at least vSphere 7.0 Update 2 and vSphere Replication 8.4 in both sites.

  • Replication performance improvements

    Replication performance has been optimized such that replication throughput is up to 3X higher when using high bandwidth and low latency connectivity between the protected and recovery sites. This capability requires at least vSphere 7.0 Update 2 and vSphere Replication 8.4 at the recovery site.

  • User experience improvements:

    • Enhanced export: Now export all DR configuration data related to Recovery Plans, with Protection groups, virtual machines, and datastores 

    • Easier configuration: Use the combined Protection and Mappings wizard to achieve faster protection of your virtual machines

    • Easier replication monitoring: Replication status and replication issues are now included in the Recovery Plan for easier monitoring

    • Improved Recovery Plan history: The recent history of a Recovery Plan now shows more details on errors

    • Re-protect notification: After running a planned migration or recovery, be reminded to re-protect through a new notification

    • Improved folder mappings: See the full path and hierarchy of the folders during folder mappings

    • Auto-select placeholder datastore: The placeholder datastore is automatically selected if you do not configure one explicitly

    • Easier replication rebalancing: Now select multiple virtual machines to more easily reconfigure or move replications between vSphere Replication servers

    • Accessibility enhancements

  • Improved public API:

    New methods have been introduced for the following operations:

    • Create empty protection groups

    • Create/edit folders and move recovery plans and protection groups

    • Manual per VM protection/inventory mapping

    • Add/Remove/Get Placeholder Datastore(s)

    • Pair/Reconfigure/Break Site Recovery Manager services

    • Add VM dependencies

    For further details about the Site Recovery Manager APIs, see the Site Recovery Manager API Developer's Guide.

What's New January 8, 2021

  • VMware Site Recovery now available on VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US)

    VMware Site Recovery is now available on VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) region. VMware Site Recovery for VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) enables US Public Sector agencies to protect and migrate their workloads to FedRAMP compliant AWS GovCloud region in the US. Please, see the technical documentation for VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US) to learn how to deploy and manage an SDDC on VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud (US).

What's New December 11, 2020

  • Reduced time needed for re-protect

    The time needed for re-protecting virtual machines after a planned recovery with VMware Site Recovery has been reduced significantly. The reduction in time for re-protecting virtual machines is the largest when the delta between the data on the source site and recovery site is small. This feature works only for cloud to cloud DR topology. VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC must be upgraded to version 1.12v3 and vSphere Replication on your SDDC must be of version 8.3.2 or later. You can read more about re-protecting virtual machines after a recovery in the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

What's New December 4, 2020

  • Minimize security risks by enabling network encryption

    You can enable the network encryption of the replication traffic data for new and existing replications to enhance the security of data transfer. When the network encryption is enabled for a replication, an agent on the source encrypts the replication data on the source ESXi host and sends it to the vSphere Replication appliance on the target site. The vSphere Replication server decrypts the data and sends it to the target datastore. For more information about network encryption, see Network Encryption of Replication Traffic.

What's New September 18, 2020

  • Preservation of vSphere Tags and Categories of Virtual Machines during Failover and Recovery with Site Recovery Manager

  • Automatically add new disks to replication, without interruption of ongoing replication

What's New June 25, 2020

  • Multiple points in time recovery

    This feature allows the vSphere Replication administrator to configure the retention of replicas from multiple points in time. After a recovery, vSphere Replication presents the retained instances as ordinary virtual machine snapshots. Each replica is a Point in Time (PIT) to which you can revert the virtual machine. You can recover virtual machines at different points in time (PIT), such as the last known consistent state. You can configure the number of retained instances on the Recovery Settings page of the replication configuration wizards. You can view details about the currently retained instances in the replication details panel for a specific replication in vSphere Replication Outgoing and Incoming views.

What's New April 24, 2020

  • Seamless disk-resizing

    You can increase the virtual disks of virtual machines that are configured for replication, without interruption of ongoing replication. The virtual disk on the target site will be automatically resized. For more information about the feature, see Increasing the Size of Replicated Virtual Disks.

What's New January 14, 2020

  • vSphere Replication Configuration Import/Export Tool

    VMware Site Recovery™ now offers vSphere Replication Configuration Import/Export Tool, which can be used to export and import configuration data of the replications created in vSphere Replication. If you plan to migrate vSphere Replication configuration to a different SDDC, you can use the tool to export the replications settings the related objects into an XML file. You can then import the configuration data from the previously exported file. You can find more details about the tool in the VMware Site Recovery documentation covering Exporting and Importing Replication Configuration Data.

What's New November 3, 2019

  • VMware Site Recovery 1-year and 3-year subscriptions

    Avail of significant cost savings compared to on-demand consumption with VMware Site Recovery 1-year and 3-year subscriptions. In addition to the on-demand model where you can pay as you go for usage of VMware Site Recovery, you can now also commit to and pay upfront for virtual machine protection and secure term discounts for one or three year terms. The commitment is made for a number of virtual machines and a specific region. Once a subscription is created, hourly usage for a given region up to the cumulative number of virtual machines committed to across all active subscriptions for that region will not incur on-demand VMware Site Recovery charges. Usage over the cumulative committed number of virtual machines in a given region will incur on-demand charges according to prevailing on-demand rates published at https://cloud.vmware.com/vmc-aws/pricing. For more details, see the VMware Site Recovery FAQ page, and for instructions on how to create a VMware Site Recovery subscription, consult the Getting Started section in the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

What's New October 21, 2019

  • DR protection for up to 1500 VMs per SDDC

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports replication of up to 1,500 virtual machines to a single target VMware Cloud™ on AWS Software Defined Data Center (SDDC), allowing you to protect larger environments. For more details, see Operational Limits of Site Recovery Manager in the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

What's New June 13, 2019

  • Site Recovery Manager available as appliance for on-premises deployment

    For customers protecting between on-premises datacenter and VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC, reduce layers of complexity associated with Windows Server by leveraging a Linux based operating system - Photon OS, purpose-built for only disaster recovery functions. Streamline deployment on-premises by installing the Site Recovery Manager virtual appliance directly from vCenter Server.

  • Enhancements to Site Recovery UI

    Includes ability to import/export configuration, a dark theme, view capacity information in Protection Groups Datastores tab, and monitor target datastores in the replication details pane.

What's New April 19, 2019

  • DR protection of on-premises NSX-T based data centers

    VMware Site Recovery now supports DR protection of on-premises NSX-T based data centers to VMware Cloud on AWS using VMware Site Recovery. For more details, see the VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.1.2 Release Notes.

What's New February 12, 2019

  • Site Recovery connectivity checker in Troubleshooting tab

    Accelerate your deployment of VMware Site Recovery™ using single-click tests from the Troubleshooting tab of the SDDC in the VMware Cloud on AWS console. These tests can help to identify network connectivity issues affecting VMware Site Recovery™. The tests verify connectivity from the current SDDC toward the remote site, which itself can be an on-premises site or another VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. The "Site Recovery" option will show up in the use case drop-down menu of the Troubleshooting tab when the Site Recovery add-on is active for the SDDC. For more information, see Validate Network Connectivity for VMware Site Recovery in the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

  • Support for fan-in and other multi-site topologies

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports fan-in and other multi-site topologies, allowing you to connect a single VMware Cloud™ on AWS SDDC that is based on NSX-T to multiple on-premises sites and/or to other VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs for disaster recovery purposes. You can pair up to ten remote sites with a single SDDC. You can recover virtual machines from multiple protected sites to the same VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC, or recover different sets of virtual machines from a single VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC to multiple recovery sites. Other complex multi-site topologies are also now possible provided you can establish network connectivity between the remote sites and the shared VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC. For more information, see VMware Site Recovery in a Multi-Site Topology in the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

What's New December 18, 2018

The following new features and changes are Available or in *Preview for this release:

Definitions

Available: Feature now available for use by applicable customers and 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

Features listed below are Available unless indicated as *Preview.

  • Support for fan-in and other multi-site topologies (*Preview)

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports fan-in and other multi-site topologies, allowing you to connect a single VMware Cloud™ on AWS SDDC that is based on NSX-T to multiple on-premises sites and/or to other VMware Cloud on AWS SDDCs for disaster recovery purposes. You can pair up to four remote sites with a single SDDC. You can recover virtual machines from multiple protected sites to the same VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC, or recover different sets of virtual machines from a single VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC to multiple recovery sites. Other complex multi-site topologies are also now possible. For more details on multi-site topologies, see the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

What's New December 7, 2018

  • DR protection for up to 1000 VMs per SDDC

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports replication of up to 1,000 virtual machines to a single target VMware Cloud™ on AWS Software Defined Data Center (SDDC), allowing you to protect larger environments. For more details, see Operational Limits of Site Recovery Manager in the VMware Site Recovery documentation.

What's New November 2, 2018

  • Support for NSX-T

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports protecting to or from VMware Cloud™ on AWS SDDCs based on NSX-T, giving users more flexibility and control over their networking configuration for their disaster recovery needs.

What's New October 22, 2018

  • Fan-out topology improvements - Activate DR with custom Site Recovery Manager extension ID

    VMware Site Recovery can now be activated on a VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC with a custom extension ID which allows you to pair this instance with an on-premises Site Recovery Manager installation using a custom plug-in identifier or a VMware Site Recovery instance on another VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC deployed with the same custom extension ID. This makes it easier to incrementally implement fan-out disaster recovery topologies. For example, if you already have an on-premises Site Recovery Manager installation deployed with the default plug-in identifier and paired with another on-premises Site Recovery Manager instance or with another VMware Cloud SDDC, you can now install a second on-premises Site Recovery Manager in the same vCenter Server instance with a non-default custom plug-in identifier and pair it to a newly deployed VMware Site Recovery instance activated with the same custom extension ID.

What's New September 6, 2018

  • New region: Asia Pacific (Sydney)

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports activation on SDDCs provisioned in the Asia Pacific (Sydney) region of VMware Cloud™ on AWS.

  • Optimize resource management of your DR cluster after failover, by automating cluster scaling with Elastic DRS

    You can now automate cluster scaling with Elastic Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). The Elastic (DRS) automatically scales the number of hosts up or down in an SDDC cluster based on CPU, memory, and storage utilization.

What's New May 17, 2018

  • New region: EU (Frankfurt)

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports activation on Software Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) provisioned in the EU (Frankfurt) region of VMware Cloud™ on AWS.

  • Multi-site disaster recovery topology support: fan-out from on-premise

    Extend your existing on-premises disaster recovery strategy to the cloud by protecting some on-premises workloads to VMware Cloud™ on AWS using VMware Site Recovery™ while simultaneously protecting other workloads managed by the same on-premises vCenter Server to a secondary on-premises disaster recovery site. Multiple instances of Site Recovery Manager 8.1 can be deployed on-premises, with one paired to VMware Cloud™ on AWS for disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS) and others paired to secondary data centers.

  • Replication Seeding

    Accelerate time to protection by leveraging previously replicated base disks of virtual machines as the seeds for the new replication. Replication for VMs that have been protected in the past is able to use previously replicated base disks as seeds, instead of requiring an initial full synchronization.​ For more information, see Replicating Virtual Machines Using Replication Seeds in the vSphere Replication 8.1 Administration guide.

  • Backward compatibility with older vCenter Server versions

    Simplify DR protection by pairing VMware Site Recovery™ with sites running earlier versions of vCenter Server. Building on previous releases, VMware Site Recovery™ is compatible with multiple versions of vCenter Server, allowing you to protect sites running vCenter Server versions 6.7, 6.5, and 6.0U3.

What's New March 7, 2018

  • New region: EU (London)

    VMware Site Recovery™ now supports activation on Software Defined Data Centers (SDDCs) provisioned in the EU (London) region of VMware Cloud™ on AWS.

  • Site Recovery Firewall Rules Accelerator

    VMware Site Recovery™ now provides a Firewall Rules Accelerator user interface in the VMware Cloud™ on AWS console to streamline the process of creating firewall rules between your on-premises data center and the Management Gateway for disaster recovery purposes. Currently, these firewall rules must be manually created in the Network tab of the SDDC to allow data replication traffic in both directions, communication with the Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication management components, and access to the VMware Site Recovery user interface. While you can still follow this manual process to create the rules, now you also have the option of using the Firewall Rules Accelerator to automatically generate the required rules for a remote network that you specify. Rules created through the Firewall Rules Accelerator can be subsequently viewed, edited, and deleted using the Network tab of the SDDC.

What's New November 28, 2017

  • Disaster Recovery as a Service VMware Site Recovery now Generally Available

About VMware Site Recovery

The VMware Site Recovery™ service expands and simplifies traditional disaster recovery operations by delivering on-demand site protection across a common, vSphere-based operating environment from on-premises to the cloud. The service protects workloads between on-premises datacenters and VMware Cloud™ on AWS, and between different instances of VMware Cloud™ on AWS. Built on top of the enterprise-grade recovery plan automation of VMware Site Recovery Manager and the native hypervisor-based replication capabilities of vSphere Replication, the service provides an end-to-end disaster recovery solution that reduces the requirements for a secondary disaster recovery site, accelerates time-to-protection, and simplifies disaster recovery operations.

  • Key Features

    • Natively integrated into VMware Cloud™ on AWS

    • Proven Site Recovery Manager orchestration and automation capabilities

    • Recovery plan orchestration delivers aggressive RTO capabilities

    • Non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans

    • VM-centric replication for fine-grained control

    • Support for bulk migration of workloads to VMware Cloud on AWS

    • Streamlined HTML 5 user interface

    • Support for multiple vSphere versions on-premises

Localization

  • English

  • French

  • German

  • Japanese

  • Korean

  • Simplified Chinese

  • Traditional Chinese

  • Spanish

  • Italian

Earlier releases of VMware Site Recovery components

VMware Site Recovery Manager

Features, known issues, and resolved issues of Site Recovery Manager are described in the release notes for each release. Release notes for earlier releases of VMware Site Recovery Manager are:

vSphere Replication

Features, known issues, and resolved issues of vSphere Replication are described in the release notes for each release. Release notes for earlier releases of vSphere Replication are:

Caveats and Limitations

VMware Site Recovery

  • New - Enhanced vSphere Replication is not supported if the on-premises vSphere Replication paired to VMware Site Recovery on VMware Cloud on AWS is not upgraded to vSphere Replication 8.8.

  • New - VMware Site Recovery for VMware Cloud on AWS Outposts requires that both the source and target site use the same Org. ID.

  • New - VMware Site Recovery with enhanced replication capability requires Site Recovery Manager and vSphere Replication versions 8.7 and later for both the source and the target site, and VMC on AWS Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) version 1.22 or later.

  • New - VMware Site Recovery does not support VMware Virtual Volumes with enhanced replication with a target RPO of 1 Minute.

  • For VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud, the VMware Site Recovery add-on is supported only on SDDCs version 1.10 or later.

  • For VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud SDDCs created after January 8th, 2021, the AD group of users who operate VMware Site Recovery must be added to the vCenter group "CloudAdminGroup" in the SDDC. For instructions, see KB 56489. For VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud SDDCs created before January 8th, 2021, please contact support to determine if VMware Site Recovery can be activated for your VMware Cloud on AWS GovCloud SDDC.

  • VMware Site Recovery with Site Recovery Manager version before 8.6 does not support protection of VMs already protected by VMware or third-party solutions based on High-frequency snapshots. For more information, see Site Recovery Manager and VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery High-Frequency Snapshots in the Site Recovery Manager 8.5 documentation. With Site Recovery Manager 8.6 or later, such cases are supported with certain limitations. For more information, see Site Recovery Manager and VMware Cloud Disaster Recovery High-Frequency Snapshots in the Site Recovery Manager 8.6 documentation.

  • Site Recovery Manager server call-out scripts and Pre-Power On Steps on the recovery Site Recovery Manager server on VMware Cloud on AWS are not supported.

  • VMware Site Recovery supports the protection of a single VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC to up to ten different recovery sites.

  • VMware Site Recovery supports the protection of up to ten protected sites to a single VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC shared recovery site.

  • VMware Site Recovery does not support encrypted virtual machines and VMs with a Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM).

  • You cannot use the Site Recovery Manager integration with VMware HCX when using VMware Site Recovery.

  • Array-based replication is not supported with VMware Cloud on AWS.

  • VMware Site Recovery does not currently support the use of vSphere Replication with external storage arrays as replication target.

  • VMware Site Recovery does not currently support AWS FSx for NetApp ONTAP NFS storage neither as a source nor as a target for a replication.

  • vApps replication is not supported with VMware Cloud on AWS.

  • vSphere Replication self-replication is not supported.

  • vCenter Cloud Gateway Appliance is not supported.

  • Replication to a vCloud Director-based cloud is not supported.

  • If the Alarms tab is not selected, there is no visible notification for new Site Recovery Manager or vSphere Replication alarms.

  • VMware Site Recovery standalone UI does not display vSphere Replication server tasks, events, and alarms. To check the vSphere Replication server tasks, events, and alarms, go to the vSphere Client.

  • The cloud admin user cannot define, acknowledge or reset alarms in Site Recovery Manager and on the cloud site vCenter Server.

  • The following advanced settings are available in the VMware Site Recovery UI but are not supported in VMware Site Recovery

    • Storage Provider

    • ABR Storage Policy

    • Storage

  • vSphere Flash Read Cache is disabled on virtual machines after recovery and the reservation is set to zero. Before performing a recovery on a virtual machine that is configured to use vSphere Flash Read Cache, take a note of the virtual machine's cache reservation from the vSphere Web Client. You can reconfigure vSphere Flash Read Cache on the virtual machine after the recovery.

  • To use Two-factor authentication with RSA SecureID or Smart Card (Common Access Card) authentication your environment must meet the following requirements:

    1. Use the administrator credentials of your Platform Services Controller to install Site Recovery Manager and to pair your Site Recovery Manager sites.

    2. The vCenter Server instances on both Site Recovery Manager sites must work in Enhanced Linked Mode. To prevent failures during upgrade of Site Recovery Manager from to a newer version of Site Recovery Manager, the vCenter Server instances on both sites must be direct replication partners.

vSphere Replication

  • To use the seamless disk re-sizing feature, you need vSphere 7.0 on the source site and vSphere 6.5 or later on the target site.

  • You cannot configure the vSphere Replication appliance when the Platform Services Controller is installed with a custom port.

  • vSphere Replication does not support VSS quiescing on Virtual Volumes.

  • vSphere Replication cannot replicate virtual machines that share vmdk files.

  • vSphere Replication does not support vSphere APIs for IO Filtering on both the source and the target sites. You cannot replicate a virtual machine that is assigned a VM Storage Policy that contains IOFilters, nor can you assign such a policy to the replication target VM. Before configuring a virtual machine for replication, verify that the VM Storage Policy that is assigned to it does not contain IOFilters. Do not assign VM Storage policies with IOFilters to virtual machines that are already configured for replication.

  • Deploying more than one vSphere Replication appliance produces a warning on the boot screen. This requires user confirmation to either continue and configure all replications again or shut down the new appliance so that it does not interfere with the old one. This situation does not occur when deploying more than one vSphere Replication servers.

  • vSphere Replication supports a maximum disk size of 62TB. If you attempt to enable replication on a virtual machine with a disk larger than 62TB, the virtual machine will not perform any replication operation and will not power on.

  • vSphere Replication tracks larger blocks on disks over 2TB. Replication performance on a disk over 2TB might be different than replication performance on a disk under 2TB for the same workload depending on how much of the disk goes over the network for a particular set of changed blocks.

  • vSphere Replication no longer supports IBM DB2 as the vSphere Replication database, in accordance with the removal of support for DB2 as a supported database for vCenter Server 5.5. If you use DB2 as an external vSphere Replication database, contact VMware support for instructions about how to migrate your data to a supported database.

  • vSphere Replication does not support upgrading the VMware Tools package in the vSphere Replication appliance.

  • vSphere Replication supports replicating RDMs in Virtual Compatibility Mode. RDMs in Physical Compatibility Mode cannot be configured for replication.

  • vSphere Replication does not replicate virtual machine snapshot hierarchy at the target site.

  • You can configure virtual machines that are powered off for replication. However, actual replication traffic begins when the virtual machine is powered on.

  • When using Storage DRS at a replication site, ensure that you have homogeneous host and datastore connectivity to prevent Storage DRS from performing resource consuming cross-host moves (changing both the host and the datastore) of replica disks.

  • The 5 minute RPO requires the source host to be ESXi 6.0U3 or later for vSAN, and ESXi 6.5 for other supported datastores.

  • vSphere Replication 8.2 does not support the virtual NVMe (vNVMe) capability in VMware vSphere.

  • The 5 minute RPO scales to a maximum supported limit of 50 VMs on a provisional Virtual Volumes datastore.

Resolved Issues

  • Slow initial sync when Change Block Tracking (CBT) is enabled on the virtual machine

    Initial sync replication is very slow when Change Block Tracking (CBT) is enabled on the protected virtual machine.

    This issue is fixed in vSphere 7.0 Update 2. You must have this version of vSphere on the protected site to benefit from the fix.

  • Site Recovery Manager cannot apply IP subnet rules during failback of a virtual machine to a protected site if the virtual machine was recovered on an opaque network on the recovery site

    When Site Recovery Manager recoveres a vNIC to an NSX-T opaque nework on a recovery site, after performing reprotect and failback to the original protected site, Site Recovery Manager is unable to apply IP subnet rules for this vNIC.

    This issue is fixed in Site Recovery Manager 8.3.1.

  • The Site Recovery user interface displays connect timed out error for Platform Services Controller address which is not relevant to the known pairings

    The Site Recovery user interface might by mistake attempt to connect to a Platform Services Controller that is transitively known by some paired site, but might not be relevant or accessible to Site Recovery Manager or vSphere Replication at the current site.

    This issue is fixed in Site Recovery Manager 8.3.

  • You might see a link to Configure vSphere Replication appliance in a VMware Cloud on AWS environment

    You might see a link to Configure vSphere Replication appliance in a VMware Cloud on AWS environment. When you click on the link nothing happens as you do not have access to the virtual appliance management interface UI.

    This issue is fixed in Site Recovery Manager 8.3.

  • You cannot configure replication for a virtual machine that has vmdk files with the same name

    A virtual machine can have vmdk files (hard disks) with the same name. This might happen when you add a new hard disk to a virtual machine after you have created the VM, and the new disk is on a different datastore from the existing hard disks. Such virtual machine cannot be configured for replication.

    This issue is fixed in vSphere Replication 8.1.

  • If you open the History tab of a recovery plan that you have not run yet, you might see an Operation Failed error

    When you open the History tab of a recovery plan that you have not run yet, you might see the following error:

    Error: Operation Failed

    The recovery plan history identified by '-2300' was not found.

    This issue is fixed.

  • If you use a Firefox browser, you cannot configure for replication multiple virtual machines

    If you use a Firefox browser, you receive an error when you attempt to configure for replication multiple virtual machines.

    This issue is fixed.

  • If you use an Active Directory user account for VMware Site Recovery operations​, you receive the error: Permission to perform this operation was denied.

    When you use Hybrid Linked Mode the Active Directory user account that is used to access inventories both on the cloud and on-premises is not authorized to work with VMware Site Recovery. If you try to pair Site Recovery sites or to replicate virtual machines, you receive the error: Permission to perform this operation was denied. You must log in with the [email protected] user for VMware Site Recovery operations on the VMware Cloud on AWS site.

    This issue is fixed.

  • When using Internet Explorer 11 or Edge browsers, you might notice slow performance in rendering while interacting with the VMware Site Recovery UI

    You experience slow performance in rendering of the VMware Site Recovery UI in Internet Explorer 11 and Edge browsers.

    This issue is fixed.

  • Unsupported version errors appear on every refresh operation in the Site Recovery Manager 6.5 user interface

    If you have Site Recovery Manager 6.5 and Site Recovery Manager 8.x registered under the same Platform Services Controller or under federated PSCs, you get unsupported version errors on every refresh operation in the Site Recovery Manager 6.5 UI.

    This issue is fixed in Site Recovery Manager 6.5.1.1.

Known Issues

  • New - Failover or Planned Migration fails with an error during the virtual machine Power ON operation

    A large scale Failover or Planned Migration might fail with an error "A general system error occurred: Sandboxd call timed out" during the VM Power ON operation.

    Workaround: Re-run the failed recovery plan.

  • New - During Automatic conversion, when the hosts are in maintenance mode, some of the DR workflow operations might fail for a few VMs

    As part of the Automatic conversion process from i3 to i4i, the nodes are marked in maintenance mode before the conversion begins. During this process some of the DR workflows might fail for a few VMs with the following error:

    "VR synchronization failed for VRM group. Synchronization monitoring has stopped. Please verify replication traffic connectivity between the source host and the target vSphere Replication Server. Synchronization monitoring will resume when connectivity issues are resolved."

    Workaround: Retry the workflow after the host exits from maintenance mode.

  • During Reprotect operation, the replication status for all virtual machines replicating through the same target replication server shows as 'Not-Active'

    The vSphere Replication Management server gets an unverified token from the replication server and as a result any replication through the target replication server fails and reports its status as 'Not-Active'.

    Workaround: Restart the hbrsrv service on the target vSphere Replication appliance.

    1. SSH to the target vSphere Replication appliance as admin.

    2. Run the following command. sudo service hbrsrv restart

  • When you attempt to reconfigure a virtual machine with quiescing enabled, the reconfiguration fails with an error

    When you enable quiescing for a virtual machine, it initiates snapshot creation for that virtual machine. During a reconfiguration workflow, the API calls made to vim.HbrManager might cause a race condition if the quiescing-initiated snapshot creation overlaps with the API call. As a result the reconfiguration fails with an error and the log shows vim.fault.TaskInProgress exception.

    Workaround: Retry the virtual machine replication reconfiguration. This allows the API call without an interference from the quiescing-initiated snapshot creation.

  • Virtual machines replication status shows 'Error'

    When the source site was down and then it was brought up again, the user interface might incorrectly report replication error.

    Workaround: Keep all the replication settings the same and reconfigure the replication. 

  • The Reprotect operation fails during a Disaster Recovery

    During a Disaster Recovery the Reprotect operation fails with the following error: "A replication error occurred at the vSphere Replication Server for replication VM Name. Details: 'No connection to VR Server for virtual machine on host in cluster in Datacenter: Unknown'

    Workaround: Reconfigure the replications for the failed virtual machines and re-run the Reprotect operation.

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