Power on replicated virtual machines after site failure

[mike-p]

What happens with a replication if the primary site fails and i intend to power on the replica's on the second site? Do I need to stop the appliance first because the replication is interrupted?

Thanks & Regards

[sjesse]

Are you referring to vsphere replication? If so you can't manually power then on, there is a process to do that through vsphere replication that will update the appliance database of the status of the replication.

[mike-p]

ok, do i have to restore / recover the replica's first? As far as I understood the technical description the replicas are simply clones which are managed by the appliance.

I this case I need the double amount of datastore space - for the replica and the recovered vm.

[sjesse · Accepted solution]

Its only one storage, and its just the vmdk that copied initially, when you recover the vm the vm is created at the target site using the replicated data.

[mike-p]

This means that a replica vmdk becomes a restored vmdk like a convert procedure? This would be the best option for me.

Do you know if this is described in the documentation or a white paper? Until know i did not find any sources.

[sjesse]

How vSphere Replication Works

"When you configure a virtual machine for replication, the vSphere Replication agent sends changed blocks in the virtual machine disks from the source site to the target site, where they are applied to the copy of the virtual machine. This process occurs independently of the storage layer. vSphere Replication performs an initial full synchronization of the source virtual machine and its replica copy. You can use replication seeds to reduce the amount of time and bandwidth required for the initial replication."

"When you manually recover a virtual machine, vSphere Replication creates a copy of the virtual machine connected to the replica disk, but does not connect any of the virtual network cards to port groups. You can review the recovery and status of the replica virtual machine and attach it to the networks. You can recover virtual machines at different points in time, such as the last known consistent state. vSphere Replication presents the retained instances as ordinary virtual machine snapshots to which you can revert the virtual machine."

This says the same thing I said, while its replicating its just the vmdk, but when you recover it thats when it it creates the recoverd vm.