We plan to do a MOVE of a VPG from our Protected Site to our Recovery Site. This is a PLANNED migration while both the Protected Site and Recovery Site are up & running. However, we’d like to be able to: 1) Keep the source VMs on the Protected Site, 2) Initiate Reverse-Replication, AND 3) Modify the Journal Location of all the protected VMs being moved so that these point back to dedicated Journal datastores in the Protected Site. What is the best way of accomplishing this? Note: We’d also like to be able to temporarily “pause” the delta sync so that it only commences AFTER we’ve pointed the Journal location of each protected VM to dedicated Journal datastores in the Protected Site.
In order to initiate reverse replication, the move would need to be committed. This typically will remove the VMs from inventory at the original protected site. The disks will remain and become the preseed disks to begin the reverse replication. You can’t have both as the disks will either be locked by the VM or locked by being attached to VRA for the now inbound replication.
You could possibly look into seeing if the clone operation may achieve more of what you’re looking for. This of course duplicates and you would need to configure the replication back to the original production site manually. The journal modification is tricky as certain states of the VPG will prevent modifications of any kind.
Can you please elaborate on your comment “The journal modification is tricky as certain states of the VPG will prevent modifications of any kind”. I have no plans of creating clones for various reasons, including lack of disk capacity and compute resources. I understand about “keeping the source VM” as the option to choose for preseeding and also the move operation resulting in the removal of the VMs from inventory at the original Protected site. At what point can I initiate reverse-replication?
Irene L.
