One of the coolest features that has been included with vSphere 5.1 in my opinion is vSphere Replication. (Make sure to read the what’s new paper) The reason for it being is that it now brings “advanced” technology to everyone (Essentials Plus and upwards). I have used vSphere Replication in 5.0 and it was nice, but with 5.1 the installation and configuration process has been improved. For instance the database is now included in the appliance and it isn’t as DNS sensitive as it was with 5.0. This makes installing and configuring it a matter of minutes.
I am going to assume you have “vSphere Replication” traffic enabled on a VMkernel NIC, if you do not know how to create a VMkernel NIC check this article
Lets get started. I downloaded the vSphere Replication virtual appliance and imported and configured it in just a couple of steps using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client:
- Go to your cluster under “vCenter” —> “Hosts and Clusters”.
- Right click the cluster object and click “All vCenter Actions” —> “Deploy OVF Template”
- As a source I select the ova file I downloaded, now click “Next”
- Validate the details and click “Next”
- If you agree “Accept” the EULA and click “Next”
- Select the “Name and folder” this virtual machine will needs to be placed in and click “Next”
- Select the “Datastore” it needs to be provisioned to and click “Next”
- Select the “Network” it needs to be connected to and click “Next”
- Provide an administrative “password” and enter the “Networking properties” and click “Next”
- Click “Next” on the vService bindings, when the binding status is “ok”
- Click “Finish”
Now the vSphere Replication appliance is ready to be powered on. Depending on where you are replicating to there might be some additional steps required. If you are replicating to a second vCenter Server you will need to deploy a vSphere Replication appliance in that environment as well. Note that you will need to link two appliances together before you can replicate anything.
I don’t have a second vCenter Server and I just want to replicate virtual machines to a secondary remote storage device as a form of backup. So I will go ahead and replicate a virtual machine.
- Go to your cluster under “vCenter” —> “Hosts and Clusters”.
- Right click one of your virtual machines, I will use the vCenter Server as an example, and select “All vSphere Replication Actions” and then click on “Configure Replication”.
- As a target site select the vCenter Server itself and click “next”.
- As a target location select a datastore and click “next”.
- Decide what the RPO (recovery point objective) should be, I selected 15 minutes and click “next”.
- Click “finish”.
Now replication will be configured and the virtual machine will be replicated with an RPO of 15 minutes. Next lets check on the progress of the replica:
- Click on the “Home” button.
- Click on “vSphere Replication” in the upper right.
- Click on “Sites” and then on your vCenter Server instance, in my case “vcenter-tm01”.
- On the “Summary” tab you can see that a virtual machine replication is in progress.
- If you click “View details” you can see some more specifics. It is the first time it is being synced so it will do a full sync as indicated.
- When it is finished it should show a nice green check.
Now if needed you can recover this virtual machine. You can also pause syncing or stop it completely. There is also the option to force an instant sync or even reconfigure the replication process. All of this can be found as follows:
- Click on the “Home” button.
- Click on “vSphere Replication” in the upper right.
- Click on “Sites” and then on your vCenter Server instance, in my case “vcenter-tm01”.
- Click on the “Monitor” tab and next on “Incoming Replications”.
- Right click the appropriate virtual machine.
- If you select “Recover” you will notice your virtual machine needs to be powered off before you can recover it.
- Select the “folder” you want to recover your virtual machine to and click “Next”.
- Select the “cluster” and click “Next”.
- Note that your virtual machine will be powered on, but with a disconnected network, click “Finish”.
- Now you should see the status change to “Recovering” and when it is done to “Recovered”.
That is it… Simple right 
Related posts:
- Back to Basics: Install, configure and use vSphere Data Protection
- Can I protect my vCenter Server with vSphere Replication?
- Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to configure iSCSI
- Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to configure a vSwitch
- Back to Basics: Using the vSphere 5.1 Web Client to add an NFS share to all hosts
Now this is ideal for replication between vCenter and most probably between sites. But lets say if one wants to do this within the same vcenter on the same site would the flexibility to dictate the rpo be a good reason to implement it like that. A simple backup tool may not have that much flexibility. Trying to come up with good use cases for it besides just replication.
Obviously this must not be used as a replacement for any backup tool either because it does not have the backup tool abilities like going back in time and such to restore a certain file etc.
Where can I download this OVA file from? I can’t find it listed on VMware.com other then a tab of the vSphere itself. Is this a seperate package or is it bundled in the vSphere install?
Go to:
vmware.com/download –> click “VMware vSphere” –> then you will see the download from Essentials Plus and upwards.
Definitely a cool tool which has been missing up till now. Easy to setup and use.
Just a small note, I had to reboot my vCenter server to make the menu visible ( the “All replication actions”).
Was replication available in 5.0? I thought it was ony via srm
Please clarify
Thanks
Only via SRM, in 5.1 it is part of the core platform.
Is there no option to reverse this? Fail back after a recovery has been performed? I know that there is not currently an automated method with SRM and VR, but is there not a manual method from the recovery interface?
nevermind, I know the answer to this….
What was the answer to this?
I did this last night on my 5.1 test lab. A couple of steps you missed pointing out are that after installing the vSphere Replication appliance (from within vCenter, not by directly connecting to an ESXi 5.1 host), you need to log out and log back in again to the vSphere Web Client, so that the “Configure Replication” option becomes available. I spent ages looking for it! It is also is only visible in the Web Client…
I then set up replication from my test lab server to a server running ESXi5.1 with only locally attached SATA drives. One thing that I recommend is that you make your Windows Pagefile reside on a dedicated volume, and then you reconfigre the replication to ignore the pagefile disk – saves a lot on replication!
Log out / log in is typically the first thing I do when I run in to an issue with the Web Client… hence I probably forgot to add it.
Did I miss anything else? (as you said a couple of steps… and I don’t deem the pagefile criticial in this process)
Can this be used for an active, active replication between two sites?
For example VM’s 1-10 replicate from site A to site B and VM’s 11-20 replicate from site B to site A?
Or will that require SRM!
Was there ever an answer to this question on I am having the same delima :
Can this be used for an active, active replication between two sites?
For example VM’s 1-10 replicate from site A to site B and VM’s 11-20 replicate from site B to site A?
Or will that require SRM!
Yes, you can do that. Once VC a is connected to VC B you can replicate in each direction. Keep just in mind that VSphere replication has a limitation of 500 replications (both incoming and outgoing)
Thanks Duncan-
Question about a DR scenario involving a production environment exploding with the replicas being on a non-damaged storage device. Could I create another vCenter with the Replication appliance and recover? It looks like the vmx file is in flux because of the deltas being replicated. The vmdk looks in tact though. What would you do? This is more out of curiosity than anything else. We are using multiple backup tools for data, we are struggling with VM backups from a money standpoint.
Hello Duncan, thanks for this article. I just have a small issue. I have the same configuration as you (1 VC and local replication). But when I do the Recover on the “Incoming replication” page, jobs start on my VC but I finally have an error because the primary VM is still registered on the VC (The name ‘VM Name’ already exists)… Is it normal? Could we set a different name on the config for this secondary VM? Many thanks.
You need to recover the vm in different VM & Templates folder. Otherwise the VC will reject the registration of the new VM and the complete process of recovery will fail.
Hi All, this is my first time setting up vSphere Replication 5.1 and i am having some trouble with configuration. dont know what exactly to do but it keeps giving errors when i try to register the appliance. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
What kind of errors do you receive? Have you deployed the appliance through the vsphere web client connected to the VC or to the esx? You must do it the first way. This is mandatory because of some settings the VR need to get of the VC.
Check your DNS
Hi Duncan,
I have the same problem as a Renaud, actually I can’t do VM recovery because I have only one vcenter server and when start recovery process get error “VM name already exist. Many TKS
Duncan,
In the case of only having once vCenter and using vSphere replication to other local replication, how do you recover the VMs if you loose your vCenter in a DR event?
Maybe put your VC server on your DR sites ? If DR, you already of your VC running.
Quick question – what’s the minimum licensing level for the target host / cluster? Can I replicate from Essentials Plus to Essentials?
can i deploy and configure vSphere Replication in my vSphere 5.0 u1 environment?
This is only available in 5.1 for the equivalent in 5.0 you need to use SRM and that has a cost and other requirements attached to it
Hi,
is it possible to power up a replica without restoring it through the Replication Appliance?
Hi Duncan,
Can we keep replica of a vm on the same datastore where my original vm is running and what is the advantage of having one VR appliance each site.
Duncan/All – You mention creating a VMkernel port for vSphere Replication traffic, however even with that VMkernel configured my VR the traffic is still running over my Management NIC. I read that in 5.0 static routes were needed for the Protected Site’s Hosts – Do we still need those static routes or is there another setting/command that’s needed for the traffic to traverse that VMkernel?
Hi guys, I have a question, maybe dumb. Which way the replication goes, when replicating a VM? Does it go through Ethernet or Fiber Channel?
Thanks.
Geraldo – It currently it runs over the ESXi’s Management NIC, see my post above.
Hello Duncan,
Can we Replicate a VM from a Host in one vCenter to a Host in different vCenter ?
I have one vcenter managing two hosts (say host A and host B). I have set up replication for VM from host A to a data store on Host B. Once replication is complete and when I try to recover the the VM from Host B, i get the error message – “the source virtual machine has no instance for recovery”
What am I doing wrong? This is my lab set up which I am validating for a potential Small Business Prospect. Please help.
Could you elaborate on this, I am also trying to restore a replicated VM in a single site and cannot figure out how to get around it failing to register because the name already exists.
“You need to recover the vm in different VM & Templates folder. Otherwise the VC will reject the registration of the new VM and the complete process of recovery will fail.”
Geraldo, Steve
Using the Web Client you can change the VMKernel Port and enable services for vSphere Replication traffic. This is not visible with the vSphere Client and can only be done with the Web GUI.
Selec the Host, select Manage, select Networking, Select Virtual Switches, select one of the Switches, select one of the VMKernel Ports, for example vmk0 and then click on the Pencil icon to edit it.
On the Port Properties you will see Enable Services with options for vMotion Traffic, Fault Tolerant Logging, Management Traffic and vSphere Replication traffic.
The issue I see is that is VMKernel Port based, so even if you have a vSwitch with two vVMkenrel ports with dual nics in link agregation it is only applicable to one of the ports. If you try adding it to the second port it takes it off the first one.
Regards,
Paul
I have a single vcenter server managing several clusters across 2 separate physical datacenters. Can I use vsphere replication appliance to replicate the VM’s from one datacenter to another without having 2 vcenter servers?
Also, can anyone tell me what is the remote site IP address in vsphere replication 5.1? Is it the IP address of the remote vsphere replication appliance?
Your comments and response would be appreciated.
Regards
Yes you can replicate within one single VC. In that case while configuring a replication chose the same VC as target site. When you are connecting to a remote VC, e.g VC not in your inventory, you need to provide the remote VC address, either ip or dns. Keep in mind that the vsphere replication servers must be able to resolve the remote VCs
Hi Martin,
Thanks for your reply. I have a couple of more questions-
1. Is there any advantage of having 2 separate vcenter servers in 2 physical sites vs having a single vcenter server? We have configured a single vcenter server in high availability mode by using a cheap method of keeping a clone in the 2nd datacenter pointing to the same SQL DSN with services stopped.
2. If I lose my physical site where the Replication appliance is running from including the vcenter server. As long as my vcenter database is replicated to the other site, can I bring my cloned vcenter back up and use the vsphere replicattion appliance web plugin to recover the replicated VM’s?
3. Where is the replicated data getting stored by the appliance? I was reading it uses CBT to replicate blocks of data but is it making a clone of the replicated VM?
Any insight would be helpful.
Thanks
Also what’s the advantage of pairing 2 vcenter servers in the primary and secondary sites for replication? I am little fuzzy about it.
Ok, one by one
- having 2 VCs and replicating between them is a case when you have long distance between your VIs and you can not administrate them through single VC. However this requires more licenses, at least for the each VC. Replicating within the same VC is the so called remote office branch office where you have near hosts that can be administrated by a single VC. Regarding to the replication itself – well if you just replicated them – it doesn’t matter. However, if you decide to grow and want to use SRM to protect them – then you must have 2 VC as this is the topology SRM supports.
- In order to recover replicated VM (it doesn’t matter if we are talking about one or 2 VCs scenario) you need to have vSphere Web Client which can access the VC, where the replication goes, e.g. the target site. If you lose this VC…. that is bad. In the related posts above, you will see “Can I protect my vCenter Server with vSphere Replication?” which is a workaround, but not officially supported by VMware way of doing things.
- The replicated data are stored on the datastore you point during configure a replication. This datastore is located on the target site.
- You actually pair sites (both VC and VR). From user perspective and vSphere Web Client perspective you are working with VCs. That is why you pair them. Also, SRM users are common with that behavior. The pairing can somehow be defined of the administrative role of defining where VMs could be replicated and other users w/o administrative role to configure the replications.
Thanks again. With a single replication appliance and a single vcenter server, the replication appliance is responsible for sending the changed data from the running VM and applies the changes to the datastore in the remote datacenter.
The only thing is replicated VM’s are not visible in vcenter? Can I view the replicated VM’s in vcenter?
Although replicating vcenter using the appliance sounds like a cool workaround and I understand it’s a unsupported option. Can I recover the vcenter server from the web client if my vcenter server is unavailable?
Your answers are much appreciated.
Wait…
Replication of data is done by a module living on the ESX host. The VR appliance is responsible to receive the data and write it down on the target datastore.
In order to see what is replicated and where, you need to go to the vSphere Replication UI in the vSphere Web Client. Under Monitor->Outgoing replications you will see all VMs that replicated. Under Monitor->Incoming replications you will see the VMs are replicated to this site.
If this is the ROBO case – you have the replicated VMs already. If it is not – on the target site the only place you can see the replicated VMs is under incoming replications. Those replications are not actually a real VMs or placeholder VMs.
The web client is connecting to a VC – so in order to anything you need a VC. The VR does not care what is in the replicated VM. So replicated a VC is absolutely supported. The unsupported issue here is the recovery described in the above article. This manual recovery process is valid for every replicated VM.
One last question. I know you must be hating me by now
What is the DR for the replication appliance itself? What if the appliance is corrupted beyond recovery and it was replicating 100 VM’s. How will I see my VM’s?
Dear Martin,
I am facing a problem at my site.
As I just saw in the history, many people asked you about replicating using one Vcenter managing 2 servers at the ,main and 1 at the dr site.
I have installed 1 replication instance and located it at the main site. the replication went smooth.
And since my VCenter is located on the main site, I need to replicate it or clone it to the DR so if anything happened to the main site, I need it to recover my replicated VMs.
I tried both ideas but went into the same problem in both.
But when simulating the main site failure, the cloned Vcenter couldn’t detect the Vcenter at the replicating aapliance. I tried to move the Replication instance to be running at the DR site, but this didn’t help either since when logging to the web client on the cloned vcenter, and go to the vsphere replication tab, it couldn’t detect my site, thus couldn’t recover.
Do you think I should have 1 replication appliance on each site?
Or do you think that the cloned Vcenter idea doesn’t work? and if so, What can I do to recover my Vms if I have a major failure in my main site including vcenter failure.
Sorry for the long post, but I am becoming desperate.
Hi Elie,
I’m not sure I got the complete picture here.
If you replicate VMs from one VC to another (doesn’t matter the number of the hosts, but each VC must have VR appliance installed) in case of disaster you need only the VC and VR on the DR site to recover the machines. Those machines will be registered in the DR VC. You are not required to replicate the main VC itself – you already have one on the secondary site. In case you want full mirror of the main site to the DR site you will need SRM on top of VR on both sites.
You can get more info by reading http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/techpaper/Introduction-to-vSphere-Replication.pdf for both 2 VC and 1 VC use cases
Regards,
Martin thx for your reply but my main problem is that I have 1 VC which manages the main and the DR Site.
when the main site is down, i do not have a vcenter at the dr.
so I have 2 options;
either I power up an already cloned version of the Vcenter at the dr and try to recover the vms from it,
or I try to power up the replica of the vcenter, knowing that I already replicated my vcenter vm to the dr site.
the cloned VC isn’t working.
I tried to follow this link:
http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/09/21/can-i-protect-my-vcenter-server-with-vsphere-replication/
and I could manage to recover my vms, knowing that my replication appliance is powered up on the dr site, or when powering up the replicated vc on the dr site, i can not detect the appliance to recover.
isn’t there any official way to do it?
i try to setup this for testing, but Configure Replication was not show up after i deploy the virtual replicate appliance in one Vcenter..i got two hosts connect to this vcenter…any idea?
vSphere Web Client will download/install VR UI upon login. So once the VR appliance boot you need to logout and log back in the web client. Then you’ll see VR UI and configure replication option
All,
Is it possible to replicate to more than one datastore? As an example, I have a one vCenter site. I want to replicate my critical VM’s from SAN1 to SAN2, but could I also replicate them to a branch office site for DR? It’s not obvious that I can at this point….
Another quickie, sort of related, is about the one vCenter issue everyone seems to be having. Sounds like clones and replication of your vCenter is not having much success? Has anybody tried replicating at the SAN/LUN level for a DR scenario? Or has anybody found the holy grail to replicate the vCenter AND restore your environment from it?
TIA
Stuart
Great notes but missing 1 vital step, the vmkernal/routing so that we don’t saturate the LAN with replication traffic if using VR locally to a NAS (which is actually on SAN Subnet).
The;
> “I am going to assume you have “vSphere Replication” traffic enabled on a VMkernel NIC, if you do not know how to create a VMkernel NIC check this article” according to the below link/post suggest that is just a TAG, not really a routing change. We clicked the tick for vSphere replication and even rebooted appliance, still ignores and goes to office router back into LAN switch, etc… we want it to direct from SAN to NAS, leaving the LAN out of it.
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/390076?start=0&tstart=0
Any thoughts? or do we need to wait on vmware to address this?