To ensure a successful virtual machine replication, you must verify that your virtual infrastructure respects certain limits before you start the replication.

The following operational limits apply to vSphere Replication with enhanced replication:
  • You can only deploy one vSphere Replication appliance on a vCenter Server instance. After you deploy another vSphere Replication appliance, during the initial configuration process in the VRMS Appliance Management Interface, vSphere Replication detects another appliance already deployed and registered as an extension to vCenter Server. To proceed with the new appliance, you must confirm.
  • Each newly deployed vSphere Replication appliance can manage a maximum of 500 replications. See KB 2102453 for more information.
  • vSphere Replication 9.0 uses only an embedded database and requires additional configuration to enable the support of a maximum of 5000 replications. See KB 2102463.
  • The maximum number of replications with 5 minute RPO can vary, depending on the network bandwidth and the change rates per disk. vSphere Replication 9.0 can accommodate 5 minute RPO for 500 VMs.
Important: Enhanced replications require minimum versions vSphere Replication 9.0.x, vCenter Server 8.0u2 or later, and ESXi host 8.0u2 or later.
Table 1. Replication Maximums for vSphere Replication 9.0.x
Item Maximum
vSphere Replication appliances per vCenter Server instance. 1
Maximum number of additional vSphere Replication servers per vSphere Replication. 9
Maximum number of virtual machines configured for protection using vSphere Replication enhanced replication. 5000
Note: vSphere Replication with enhanced replication capability including auto-scaling and load balancing, scales to a limit of 5000 protected VMs by provisioning additional ESXi hosts to accomodate the workload requirements. The number of replicated VMs per host on the target site depends on, but is not limited to the virtual machines disks size, number of disks, change rate, and RPO.
Maximum number of protected virtual machines per vSphere Replication appliance (by using the embedded vSphere Replication server.) 500
Maximum number of protected virtual machines per vSphere Replication server. 500
Maximum number of virtual machines configured for one replication at a time. 20
Maximum number of protected virtual machines with 5 minute RPO per vCenter Server instance. 500
Maximum number of protected virtual machines per vSphere Replication appliance on vSAN Express storage. 1000
Note: If you are using vSAN Express Storage datastores, the vCenter Server and ESXi must be version 8.0 Update 2b or later.
Maximum number of protected disks per virtual machine on ESXi 8.0 or earlier version. 64
Maximum number of protected disks per virtual machine on ESXi 8.0 Update 1 or later version. 256
Maximum number of protected disks per host. 8192