How does initial vSphere replication work?

[MattG]

Does it attempt to copy only used blocks?

Thanks,

-MattG

[mbaecke]

http://blogs.vmware.com/uptime/2011/10/how-does-vsphere-replication-work.html

[MattG]

"The first thing VR will do when synchronizing is read the entire disk of  both the protected and recovery site and generate a checksum for each  block.  It then compares the checksum mapping between the two disk files  and thereby creates an initial block bundle that needs to be replicated  on the first pass to bring the block checksums into alignment.  This  happens on port 31031."

So I take it that this means that it doesn't copy empty blocks?

-MattG