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 be replicated to maintain data integrity.

The following topics are described in this section:

Once a VPG has been created, each virtual machine in the VPG can be replicated on the recovery site under the VRA on the host specified in the VPG definition as the host for the recovery of the virtual machine.

Every write to the protected virtual machine in a VPG is copied by the VRA on the same host as the protected machine and passed to the VRA on the host in the recovery site specified in the VPG definition as the host for the recovery of the virtual machine. These writes first are saved in a journal for a specified period and then moved to replica virtual disks managed by the VRA, which mirror the protected virtual machine disks.