VM Group Replication Options for VMware

When you use a VM group to configure replication for a VMware destination, identify the source VMs, and then provide VMware-specific values for replication to the destination site.

You can replicate to VMware from VMware streaming backups or VMware IntelliSnap backups.

Content Options

• Hypervisors: Select the hypervisor for the source VMs.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Name: Enter a descriptive name for the replication group, or change the name.

• Select VM group (not applicable for replication using VMware IntelliSnap backups): Select an existing VM group, or select Create new VM group to add specific VMs and create a new VM group.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Update the replication group if VMs are added or removed from this VM group: Select this option when you are replicating all of the VMs in a VM group, to ensure that changes to the VM group will be reflected in replication operations.

• Select VMs: Select specific virtual machines to be replicated and click OK.

  For replication using VMware streaming backups, you can select VMs from the specified VM group.

Target Options

• Recovery target: Select a previously defined recovery target or click Create new to create a new recovery target.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Access Node: Select a VSA access node (previously called a proxy) or an access node group that can be used to perform the replication operation.

  To restore multiple instances or VMs simultaneously, select Automatic to distribute the workload (instances or VMs) in the auto recovery job across the access nodes that are assigned for the destination hypervisor. This option is available for operations both from streaming backups or IntelliSnap backup copies.

  First, the VMs are assigned to the access nodes by a host match. If access nodes are not available in the same host, then the VMs are assigned to access nodes in the same data center. If there is no host or data center match, then VMs are assigned using the round-robin method.

  If you already configured the Access Node setting on the recovery target, you can change that setting in the replication group Access Node option.

  If you select an access node group to restore VMs, the Commvault software distributes the workload (instances or VMs) in the restore job across the access nodes (also called proxies) that are available in the access node group.

• Warm site recovery (Restore destination VM at the time of failover): Move this toggle key to the right to create a destination VM only during a failover.

Test Failover Options Section

You can use this section to create an isolated network for a virtual lab environment where you can test failover operations. Click Add to configure the settings in the Network Mapping dialog box, and then click Save.

Network Mapping Dialog Box

• Source Network: Select the preconfigured network to use for the recovery target.

• VLAN ID: Enter the ID you want to use for the VLAN.

• Isolated network: Enter a name for the isolated network.

• Gateway settings: To create a VM that acts as a gateway between the local devices in the isolated network and other networks, move this toggle key to the right.

  • Gateway IP: Enter an IP address for the gateway VM.

  • Gateway mask: Enter an IP address for the subnet mask.

Advanced Options

• Disable replication after group creation: To disable replication (recovery) operations after the creation of this replication group, move this toggle key to the right.

  After the replication group is created, when you are ready to start replication, go to the replication group, click Manage content and on the Target tab, move the Disable replication after group created toggle key to the left.

• Validate destination VM (Power ON and OFF): Select this option to verify that the destination VM is bootable by powering it on and then powering off. Changes resulting from the power on are not preserved. If guest tools are not installed on the source VM, validation is skipped even when this option is selected.

  The boot disk for the source VM must be a local disk (on an ESX datastore that is accessible without a network connection). If the VM uses an iSCSI virtual disk to boot or requires a network connection to access the boot disk, validation fails because the network connection is disabled for validation.

  If validation fails, the destination virtual machine reverts to its last valid (bootable) state.

• Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists: When this option is selected, the first snapshot replication operation replaces an existing virtual machine with the same name in the target location, even if the destination VM is running.

  Replication from incremental backups are not affected by this setting. Subsequent incremental backups and replication updates are applied to the destination VM without overwriting the VM. If the destination VM is currently running, the replication operation fails.

• Snapshots to retain on destination VM: Enter the maximum number of recovery point snapshots to retain on the destination site. Each recovery point snapshot represents the state of a VM that you can choose when performing a point-in-time failover.

• Disk Provisioning: Select the disk provisioning type for the destination VM: Original, Thick Lazy Zero, Thin, or Thick Eager Zero.

  When configuring a domain controller VM for replication, select Thick Lazy Zero.

  When you edit an existing replication group, you cannot change this value.

• Transport mode for VMware: Use Auto to have the transport mode selected automatically based on the environment, or select a different value from this list: SAN, HotAdd, NBD, NBD SSL, or NAS.

• Select copy: Select the backup copy that should be used as source for the replication operation.

Customization Scripts

To configure options for pre and post failover and failback scripts, click the Actions button, click Configure script, and then choose the script that you want to configure.

Prerequisites

• VMware Tools/Open VM tools

Supported Scripts

• Windows: Batch scripts

• Linux: Shell scripts

Options

• Pre-failover script: This script is run on the production (source) VM before failover.

• Post-failover script: This script is run on the Auto Recovery (Destination) VM after failover.

• Pre-failback script: This is will run on the Auto Recovery (Destination) VM before failback.

• Post-failback script: This script is run on the production (source) VM after failback.

Script Options

• Path type: Select UNC or Local.

  • UNC Credentials: Enter credentials or use a set of saved credentials:

    • Enter credentials: Select this option to manually enter the user name and password for the UNC network.

      Username: Enter the user name for a user account that has permissions to access the network path for the script.

      Password: Enter the password for the user account.

    • Use saved credentials: Select this option to use a set of credentials that were previously saved for the UNC network.

      Credentials: Select a saved set of credentials.

      Add button : Click this button and then enter and save a set of credentials.

VM Guest Options

• User name: Enter the user name for a user account that has permissions to access the network path for the script.

• Password: Enter the password for the user account.

• Confirm password: Enter the same password.

Configure Priority

To configure the priority of a script, click the Actions menu, click Change priority, and specify the priority of the script. 1 is the highest priority.

Override Options

To change the destination settings for specific VMs, move the Override virtual machines toggle key to the right, select a VM in the Replication configuration list, click the actions button , and then select Override replication options.

General Settings

• VM display name: Enter the display name for the destination VM, or enter a prefix or suffix to apply to multiple VMs.

  You can change this value only when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• Destination host: To select a host for the destination VM, click Browse.

  You can change this value only when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• Datastore: Select a datastore to be used for virtual machine disks.

  You can change this value only when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• Resource pool: Select a resource pool for the destination VM.

  You can change this value only when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

• VM folder: To replicate to a folder, click Browse and select the destination folder.

  You can change this value only when adding a new VM or if a replication group is a warm site.

Network Settings

• Network settings: To create a new mapping between a source network and a destination network, click Add.

IP Address Settings

• IP address settings: To customize IP address settings, click Add.

  To customize IP address settings for continuous replication, the VSA Guest Customization package must be installed on the VSA access node.

  For continuous replication, you cannot customize IP address settings to use WINS servers. You must use DNS servers.

  You cannot customize IP address settings for VMs with encrypted disks. If you configure custom IP address settings for a replication group that includes VMs with encrypted disks, failover operations fail for those VMs.

  If a Windows or Linux source VM uses a static IP address, you can configure an IP address for the destination VM. You can configure IP address mapping for static IP addresses for source VMs that run the following operating systems:

  • Windows 2000 and later versions

  • CentOS or RHEL: 5.x, 6x, 7.x, 8.x

  • Ubuntu: 12.x, 14.x, 16.x

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server: 10.x, 11.x, 12.x

Related Topics

Creating a Replication Group from a VM Group