Replications starting at random times

[tkdunbar]

I have 4 VMs replicating to a remote site.  They each have a 24 hour RPO.  I manually ran the jobs the first time between 9:00 and 11:30 P.M. because those are the times that I want it to run.  However, they have been running at random times of the day, but only once a day.  The last times that they ran were 6:22 AM, 5:55 PM, 9:37 PM and 1:02 PM. 

How can I get them to run once a day during the window from 9:00 to 11:30 P.M?

[Biliana]

Hi,

You cannot schedule the time window in which an instance will be created on the remote site. The algorithm that schedules the sync of deltas from source to target site is built into the hypervisor - it tries best to satisfy the RPO policy of all VMs that are running on that host and are configured for replication. It is complicated algorithm that decides when to schedule a new sync taking into account different measures - e.g. the size of disk data that needs to be transferred, time taken to complete instances in the past, bandwidth usage. You can force the creation of instance by manually invoking "Sync Now" action on the replication.

[tkdunbar]

So even if I force with Sync Now that will not make the next replication start 24 hours later?  I thought I had read that it would.

http://communities.vmware.com/message/2241975#2241975

[Biliana]

Yes, that is correct. If you force Sync now action, the next RPO starts counting from that moment on. For example you have replication configured with an 1 hour RPO. Your latest available instance is taken at 12: 05. That means that your next instance should be taken no later than 13: 05 to avoid RPO violation. If you, however manually trigger Sync Now at 12: 30, then next instance should be taken no later than 13: 30. What I was referring to in the above reply is that there is no explicit option to schedule the initial full sync currently.