This week I was having some trouble with vSphere Replication appliances in my lab and decided to rip apart my replication setup. I logined to my VR appliance VAMI address and unregistered VRMS from vCenter Server. Deleted my replication appliance in order to deploy it from scratch.

To my surprise vSphere Replication plugin was still present in my vCenter Server, even after I logged out and logged in back to webclient.

I tried to reboot my vCenter Server to see if it clears the plugin, but that trick didn’t worked for me.

Now the only option left was to uninstall the plugin was using vSphere MOB. If you are like me and dont know much about MOB then I would recommend reading this blogpost.

I followed following steps to successfully remove replication plugin from my vCenter Server.

1; Open your favourite browser and point it to URL https://vCenter-FQDN/mob and login.… Read More

In last post of this series we saw how to deploy vSphere Replication appliance. In this appliance we will see the basic configurations of the replication appliance and will replicate a VM from source site to DR site. Also we will see how to recover VM on target (DR) site when your primary site has gone down.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1:Introduction to vSphere Replication

2: Lab Setup

3: Preparing vCenter for Replication

4: Deploying vSphere Replication Appliance

Let’s jump into lab and see things into action.

1: Configure vSphere Replication Appliance

a: To start configuring vSphere Replication appliance, login to the VAMI console of the appliance. This is typically accessible over URL https://VRA_FQDN:5480

Login to appliance with user root and password set during deploying vSphere Replication appliance.

b: Review your Network configuration by clicking on Network tab.… Read More

In last post of this series we saw the prerequisites that needs to be configured in vCenter Server before start deploying the replication appliance. In this post we will see how to deploy vSphere Replication appliance.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1:Introduction to vSphere Replication

2: Lab Setup

3: Preparing vCenter for Replication

Let’s dive into the installation process of replication appliance.

The vSphere Replication appliance is available in  ovf format. Download the ovf file from here.

1: Login to vCenter Web Client and select the Esxi host where you want to deploy the replication appliance and right click on it and choose Deploy OVF template.

2: Browse to the directory where you have downloaded the ovf file and hit Next.

3: Review the ovf details and hit Next.

4: Accept the EULA and hit Next to continue.… Read More

In last post of this series we had a look on pieces of infrastructure that needs to be made ready before starting and using vSphere Replication. In this post we will see what are the vCenter server requirements before start deploying vSphere Replication appliances and start configuring it.

If you have missed earlier posts of this series then you can access the same by clicking on below links:

1:Introduction to vSphere Replication

2: Lab Setup

Following settings are required to be configured in vCenter Server prior to deploying and configuring vSphere replication Appliances.

1: vCenter Server managed IP Address

The managed address settings corresponds to vCenter server name, so basically its the IP address of the management network. By default this managed address field is left blank. The vSphere Replication appliance require this to exist, so you need to punch the management IP address of your vCenter server here and then reboot the vCenter server.… Read More

In first part of this series vSphere Replication Introduction we have discussed what is vSphere Replication and how it works. We also discussed the architecture and components involved and saw the possible use cases where vSphere Replication can be used.

In this post we will look on how to setup lab for deployment of vSphere Replication and what pieces of infrastructure should be ready before we start using vSphere Replication.

I am going to use cross site replication in my lab so here is my lab components:

Hardware Component

I have a Dell M4800 Mobile workstation laptop with 32 GB of RAM and i7 Quad Core processor. I am running all the lab components inside VMware Workstation.

My Lab Components

1. I installed Server 2012 R2 Datacenter edition as my base OS. This machine will act as my Domain Controller as well as DNS Server (AD Integrated DNS).
2. I have another Server 2012 R2 Datacenter edition installed in VMware Workstation.

… Read More

I am quite a new candidate to vSphere Replication and have seen quite a few appliances deployed in our production environment as we are offering Disaster Recovery to Cloud (DR2C) services to our customers in vCloud Air and often have to troubleshoot issues related to replication.

So to understand how disaster recovery works and what should be the area we should be looking for while troubleshooting replication issues, I decided to try my hand on learning and deploying vSphere Replication in my lab.

So let’s begin with understanding what is vSphere Replication and its architecture and what components are involved in setting up disaster recovery environment.

What is vSphere Replication?

Earlier vSphere Replication was a feature of Site Recovery Manager (SRM) that automates the failover of virtual machines to a recovery site. vSphere Replication enables the replication of virtual machines (VMs) at the virtual layer instead of at the storage layer, as was required with earlier versions of vSphere and SRM.… Read More