Because I have had some issues with my lab in the past (having to rebuild it a couple of times) I switched my storage to iSCSI (see https://my-sddc.net/vcf-on-vcd-iscsi-configuration/), but I also wanted to have another means of redundancy and for that I am using vSphere Replication.

I will replicate my two VCF instances to each other. The following setup is what I will be aiming for:

So the “odd” volumes are Production and the “even” volumes are Replication (I will make that visible in the name as well).

First step is install a vSphere Replication appliance, for this we deploy an OVF, selecting the following files:

and following the wizard, filling out the necessary information:

After deploying and powering on, we configure the appliance:

This installs the plug-in to the right vCenter Server. After this, we can configure vSphere Replication from the vCenter Server.

After deploying the second Replication appliance, to VCF02, we can pair the two. We do this two-way.

We start with logging on to the appliance and creating a New Site Pair:

We are creating a pair with a vCenter Server located in a different SSO domain:

After filling out the right server, and clicking “Find vCenter Server Instances”, we can select the correct vCenter Server:

Select the right Services:

And click Finish (in the next screen).

That will create the site pairing. With this, we can replicate from one to the other ánd the other way around.

For this, we go to “Replications” and click “New”:

Then move through the Wizard.

• Auto-assign vSphere Replication Server
• Selected Virtual Machines (all VM’s on one of the Production Datastores)
• Selected Datastore
  • Select the correct Datastore, so nas01-xxP goes to nas02-xxR and vice versa)
• Replication Settings
  • Change if needed, but can keep default
• Finish

Repeat for each combination of Production and Replication datastore, on both sites. So we get four replication schedules.

After this, we can follow the Initial Sync:

And when that is done, we can see the replication flowing: