Reverse a Replication to Cloud

You can use vSphere Replication to reverse a recovered forward replication and start copying data from the cloud to your local site.

You can replicate a virtual machine from the local site to the cloud and recover the virtual machine at the cloud site to use it while your local site is being maintained. When your local site is back online, you can synchronize the changes from the cloud to your local environment, or migrate the virtual machine from the cloud back to the local environment.

When you reverse a replication, you can only use the original replication settings. You cannot change the datastore location, RPO, PIT policy, and so on.

Note:

When you reverse a replication, the source virtual machine on the local site is unregistered from the inventory and its disks are overridden by the disks that are replicated from the cloud. When the source virtual machine is unregistered, you can no longer use it unless you recover the replication.

Prerequisites

• Verify that the cloud site is available and connected to the local site. See Connect to a Cloud Provider Site.

• In the list of forward replications, verify that the status of the replication that you want to reverse is Recovered. See Migrate a Virtual Machine to Cloud.

Procedure

1. Log in to the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client.
2. On the home page, click Site Recovery and click Open Site Recovery.
3. On the Site Recovery home page, select the site pair to the cloud provider site and click View Details.
4. Click the Replications tab and click Forward replications.
5. Select the replication that you want to reverse and click Reverse.
   Note:

   The replication status must be Recovered.

   vSphere Replication validates the source and target virtual machine, and the Reverse Replication dialog box opens.

6. Review the settings for the reverse replication and click OK.
   Caution:

   The source virtual machine on the local site is unregistered from the inventory and becomes inaccessible until you recover the replication.

Results

vSphere Replication starts synchronizing data from the cloud to your local environment.

The reversed replication is removed from the list of forward replications and appears in the list of reverse replications.

What to do next

You can recover the replication to migrate your virtual machine from cloud to your local environment.

Note:

You can pause, resume, sync, test, recover, and stop replications from cloud, but you cannot reconfigure or move these replications between vSphere Replication servers.

If the reverse replication cannot be configured, try configuring a new replication from cloud. See Configure a Replication from Cloud.