vSphere Replication uses the replication technologies included in ESXi with the assistance of virtual appliances to replicate virtual machines between source and target sites.
Installing vSphere Replication
To use vSphere Replication, you must deploy the vSphere Replication appliance on an ESXi host by using the vSphere Web Client.
The vSphere Replication appliance registers as an extension with the corresponding vCenter Server instance. For example, on the source site, the vSphere Replication appliance registers with the vCenter Server instance on the source site. Only one vSphere Replication appliance is allowed per vCenter Server.
The vSphere Replication appliance contains an embedded vSphere Replication server that manages the replication process. To meet the load balancing needs of your environment, you might need to deploy additional vSphere Replication servers at each site. Additional vSphere Replication servers that you deploy are themselves virtual appliances. You must register any additional vSphere Replication server with the vSphere Replication appliance on the corresponding site.
The vSphere Replication appliance provides a virtual appliance management interface (VAMI). You can use this interface to reconfigure the vSphere Replication database, network settings, public-key certificates, and passwords for the appliances.
Uninstalling vSphere Replication
To uninstall vSphere Replication from your environment, you must unregister the appliance from the SSO service and from the vCenter Server, and then delete the vSphere Replication appliance.
In the event of deleting the vSphere Replication appliance before unregistering it from the SSO server and the vCenter Server, a special procedure must be performed to clean your environment up.
