Offline VM replication is intended to reduce transmission time between the source DS-Client and destination DS-Client, especially for the replication of large virtual machines.

In offline VM replication, the source DS-Client saves replication data of the source virtual machine onto a local disk location in a folder as an Initial VMR Set. You then copy that folder to a local disk of the destination DS-Client machine and specify the location to import the data. The destination DS-Client places the replicated snapshot/checkpoint into the replication target virtual machine on the destination server. The snapshot/checkpoint is then ready to be used for failover.

To configure a VM replication set to perform offline replication, select Initial backup in the Specify replication set options screen.