vSphere Replication 6.0 – Part 2 – VM Replication & Recovery workflow

In  vSphere Replication 6.0 – Part 1 – Deployment and Configuration, we talked about the vSphere Replication deployment part. In current article we will focus on how to configure replication on a VM and recover the same using vSphere Replication.

I am continuing from where I stopped in  vSphere Replication 6.0 – Part 1 – Deployment and Configuration.

Right click on any VM in your inventory and select “All vSphere Replication Actions > Configure Replication”

vSphere Replication 6.0 – Part 1 – Deployment and Configuration

This article briefs about vSphere Replication 6.0 simple deployment and configuration. vSphere Replication is also referred as HBR (Hypervisor Based Replication). vSphere Replication is an extension to vCenter that provides hypervisor based VM replication and recovery.

You are good to use vSphere Replication if your vSphere license is Essentials+ and above.

vSphere Replication is a 64-bit appliance available in the form of an .ovf

1. Deploy the VR 6.0 ovf from web-client
2. The ova deployment is pretty much wizard driven and one thing to focus on is the network destination to choose for VR management network. Choose the right one as per your environment. The management network handles both management and replication traffic
3. 
4. Make a note of the password you provide here as it is required to login into the management interface later on. Provide an NTP server.
5. 
6. VR appliance by default will be deployed with..
   • Memory – 4GB
   • vCPUS – 4
   • Network Adapter -1 (Management Network)
   • Disks – 2 (16 GB & 2 GB)
7. Open the console of the VR appliance once it is powered on and check the url on the console
8. 
9. Access the url from a browser and provide the root credentials configured at step-3
10. 
11. Follow the steps as mentioned in the figure below. SSO Administrator password to be provided.
12. 
13. Configuration will be saved with VRM service up & running as shown below
14. 

Repeat the above 14-steps on a remote site

1. Invoke the web client of primary site vCenter and select ‘vSphere Replication’ , anywhere highlighted below
2. 
3. 
4. Click ‘Manage’ as our current objective is to configure target site for replication. Before this step is performed it is required that vSphere Replication instance is configured up & running on the remote/target site.
5. 
6. Once sites are connected as shown below, all is set to perform VM replication between the connected vCenters.
7. 

With this we are done with successful deployment & configuration of vSphere Replication. I will have another article (Part-2) for vSphere Replication actual workflow and monitoring. Stay tuned..