vSphere Replication Appliance Placement

[aacjao]

I'm currently looking into deploying the vSphere Replication Appliance.  We only have a single vCenter at our primary site which manages our DR site as well.  Should I place the appliance in the DR datacenter, or at the Primary Site?

As a side question, can I replicate our vCenter with the appliance as well?

Thanks in advance!

[mmarinov]

With vSphere Replication 5.1 you can replicate within one instance of vCenter between hosts. No second vCenter is required. However, you should keep in mind that in order to recover machines you need the vCenter to be up and running. Furthermore, vSphere Replication appliance is allowed one per vCenter server.

To your second question, see: http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/09/21/can-i-protect-my-vcenter-server-with-vsphere-replication/

[aacjao]

Thanks for the reply!

I understand the appliance is one per vCenter, but do I place the appliance on a host at my primary site or host at my DR site?

Thanks for the article, that should work just fine for our purposes.

[mmarinov · Accepted solution]

In the case of single vCenter replicating VMs between hosts the VC and VR appliance is good to be placed on the most reliable host from on site. The reason for this is that if the VC goes down no matter where the VR appliance is placed you won't be able to do recovery because login to the VC is required. Speaking like this your recovery site should be the most reliable host and the primary site (host) need to be other hosts.

Actually there is no requirement for this because the VR appliance write the data to the datastore where the replication is pointed. If it is on VC scenario then the reliability of the system is what defines your deployment story. If it is more than one VCs scenario - then the story is clear - one VR appliance per VC, no matter which VC you are calling primary or DR.

Hope this helps

[Troy_Clavell]

thread moved moved from VMware vCenter™ Server to vSphere Replication