Zerto Virtual Replication enables protecting virtual machines, for both disaster recovery or for extended, longer term recovery from an offsite backup, by protecting the relevant virtual machines in virtual protection groups. A virtual protection group (VPG) is a group comprised of virtual machines that are grouped together for recovery purposes. For example, the virtual machines that comprise an application like Microsoft Exchange, where one virtual machine is used for the software, one for the database, and a third for the Web Server require that all three virtual machines are replicated to maintain data integrity.