Configuring Virtual Protection Groups
You protect one or more virtual machines in a VPG. The VPG must include at least one virtual machine. After creating a VPG, you can add or remove virtual machines as required. You can only protect a virtual machine in a VPG when the virtual machine has no more than 60 disks.
Note: 60 disks requires 4 SCSI controllers each with a maximum of 15 disks.
The 60 disks can be a combination of IDE and SCSI disks, where each virtual machine can have up to 2 IDE controllers each with a maximum of 4 IDE disks and up to 4 SCSI controllers each with a maximum of 15 disks, so that the total of IDE and SCSI disks does not exceed 60 disks.
Any machine that can be hosted in vCenter Server can be protected as long as it can be hosted in the recovery site environment. Note that a Windows Server 2000 can be protected but the ZertoVssAgent and re-IPing is not supported.
When the recovery site is Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can only protect virtual machines in the protected site that are supported by AWS in the recovery site and the maximum number of supported disks is 12 for virtual machines running a Windows operating system and 1 for virtual machines running a Linux operating system.
The virtual machines can be defined under a single hypervisor host or under multiple hosts.The recovery can also be to a single host or multiple hosts. The virtual machines are recovered with the same configuration as the protected machines. For example, if a virtual machine in the protected site is configured so that space is allocated on demand and this machine is protected in a VPG, then during recovery the machine is defined in the recovery site with the same space allocation configuration. You protect virtual machines by creating the VPG on the site hosting these virtual machines. After the VPG is created, you can add or remove virtual machines from the VPG by editing the VPG in the Zerto User Interface running on either the protected or recovery site.
Note: To create a VPG you must have a recovery site available with a host with a VRA installed. The recovery site can either be a remote site, paired with the protected site, or the protected site itself, where both protection and recovery are to the same Zerto Virtual Manager site.
The VPG definition consists of the following:
General – A name to identify the VPG and the priority to assign to the VPG.
Virtual machines – The list of virtual machines being protected as well as the boot order and boot delay to apply to the virtual protection groups during recovery.
Replication Settings – VPG replication settings, such as the recovery site, host and storage and the VPG SLA. SLA information includes the default journal history settings and how often tests should be performed on the VPG. The defaults are applied to every virtual machine in the VPG but can be overridden per virtual machine, as required.
Cloud service providers can group the VPG SLA properties together in a service profile. When a service profile is used, the VPG SLA settings cannot be modified unless a Custom service profile is available.
Storage Settings – By default the storage used for the virtual machine definition is also used for the virtual machine data. This storage can be overridden per virtual machine, as required.
Recovery Settings – Recovery details include the networks to use for recovered virtual machines and scripts that should be run either at the start or end of a recovery operation.
NIC Settings – Specify the network details to use for the recovered virtual machines after a live or test failover or migration.
Backup Settings – Specify the backup properties that govern the VPG backup, including the repository where the backups are saved.
You can protect most types of virtual machines running in a vCenter. However, you cannot protect virtual machines with VirtualEthernetCardLegacyNetworkBackingInfo NICs nor with IDE devices. Also, protected virtual machine VMDK descriptor files should be default disk geometry settings. Both the disk geometry and BIOS geometry are written in the descriptor file under ddb.geometry.sectors and ddb.geometry.biosSectors respectively. If these values do not each equal 63 then there may be recovery issues unless you configure the VPG using preseeded volumes.