How to replicate a 2TB VM with VRM?

[ysfpatrick1]

I have a file server which have around 2TB data. I would like to make a replication protect for this VM.

I would like ask is it possible I clone the original one to a USB storage, bring and import the VM to the secondary site and create the replication relationship. And then only modified data will be replicate latter.

[vThinkBeyondVM]

Hi Friend,

vSphere replication in first pass will take full sync and for consequent passes it just replicate modified blocks.

Please refer below paragraph.

There are two forms of synchronization that VR will use to keep systems synchronized.  When VR is first configured for a virtual machine you can choose a primary disk file or set of disk files and a remote target location to hold the replica.  This can be an empty folder, or it can be a copy of the VMDK that has the same UUID as the primary protected system.

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.

This is called a "full synch" and only happens very rarely: Usually just on the first pass when the VM is configured for VR, but can also happen occasionally during other situations such as when recovering from a crash.

Plz read deatiled blog on VR. It is worth to read twice:

How Does vSphere Replication Work? | VMware vSphere Blog - VMware Blogs

[mmarinov]

Hi,

Since you have big data you can do the following:

1) Download your big vmdks on a USB storage

2) On the remote datastore create a new folder and upload the vmdks from the USB storage

3) Configure the VM for replication and point as destination folder the one created in 2)

4) VR will discover that you have inital copies of the disks and will use it to determine what are the changes need to be transfered

Hope this helps