5 minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO)

In vSphere Replication 8.5 and newer, you can use the 5 minute Recovery Point Objective (RPO) if the target and the source sites use vSAN, VMFS, NFS, vVol. VMware recommends applying 5 min RPO to a maximum of 500 VMs. We have tested successfully 5 min RPO on 500VMs, that reside on vSAN, VMFS6 and NFS 4.1 datastores.

The number of supported VMs, configured for 5 minute RPO can vary, based on your environment and VM workload.

Maximum number of virtual machines

The maximum number of virtual machines that you can protect by using vSphere Replication changed with version 8.4 The previous versions could protect a maximum of 2000 per vSphere Replication appliance. vSphere Replication 8.4 and 8.5 can protect up to 3000 virtual machines. Versions 8.6 and newer support protecting up to 4000 virtual machines for more details please refer to the summary tables below. The new maximum number of virtual machines that you can assign to each vSphere Replication server is 300. So, if you deploy the maximum of 9 additional vSphere Replication servers, the total number of virtual machines that you can protect is 3000, taking into account the replications handled by the vSphere Replication server that is embedded in the vSphere Replication appliance. You can distribute the virtual machines across the vSphere Replication servers as you see fit, so long as no single vSphere Replication server manages more than 300 virtual machines.

Note: The maximum of 2000 replications is supported by new deployments of vSphere Replication versions lower than 8.4 after a minor adjustment. See the Solution section below. A similar modification is needed to facilitate 3000 virtual machine support on 8.4 and newer

If you upgraded an existing vSphere Replication appliance to version 8.4, for example 6.x, you must apply additional configuration to the appliance to enable the support of up to 3000 replications. See Configuring Upgraded vSphere Replication Appliances to Support up to 3000 Replications (KB 2102463).

If you plan to replicate more than 500 virtual machines, you must change the default value for event maximum age at the vSphere Replication appliance:

ATTENTION: For vSphere Replication 8.5 and higher, the below steps 1, 2, and 3 are not needed and can be skipped.

1. In the remote console session to the vSphere Replication appliance, open the /opt/vmware/hms/conf/hms-configuration.xml file for editing.
    
2. Change the event maximum age as follows:
   <hms-eventlog-maxage>10800</hms-eventlog-maxage>
    
3. Restart the HMS service by running the following command:
   # service hms restart
    
4. Stop VCTA service by running following command:
   # service vmware-vcd stop
   NOTE: Stopping this service interrupts the replications to and from the cloud.

NOTE: If a connectivity issue occurs in your environment or the vSphere Replication appliance encounters a problem, the offline or downtime period should not exceed the period set in the hms-eventlog-maxage tag. After the problem is resolved, there must be enough time for the events to be delivered within the maximum age period.

For versions older than vSphere Replication 8.4

It is possible to create a vSphere Replication setup with more than two sites, in which each site has a vCenter Server instance and a vSphere Replication appliance. If you have more than two sites, you can protect more than 500 virtual machines. For example, you can create a setup with three sites, Site A, Site B, and Site C:

• Site A replicates 1000 virtual machines to site B
• Site A replicates 1000 virtual machines to site C
• Site B replicates 1000 virtual machines to site C

In this example, the total number of replicated virtual machines is 3000, but each site only handles 2000 replications.

• Site A has no incoming replications and 2000 outgoing replications
• Site B has 1000 incoming replications and 1000 outgoing replications
• Site C has 2000 incoming replications and no outgoing replications

By setting up more than two vSphere Replication sites, in which no individual site exceeds 2000 replications, the total number of replications can be greater than 2000.

For versions 8.4 and 8.5

For versions 8.6 and newer