Configuring Virtual Protection Groups

Use the following guidelines:

• 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 a 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 re-IP is not supported.

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. 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.

You can protect a single virtual machine in several VPGs. A virtual machine can be in a maximum of three VPGs. VPGs that contain the same virtual machine cannot be recovered to the same site.

Note: Protecting virtual machines in several VPGs is enabled only if both the protected site and the recovery site, as well as the VRAs installed on these sites, are of version 5.0 and higher.

The number of VPGs that can be defined on a site is limited only by the number of virtual machines that can be protected.

For the maximum number of virtual machines, either being protected or recovered to a site, see Zerto Scale and Benchmarking Guidelines.

Note: If the total number of protected virtual machines on the paired sites is 5000, then any additional machines are not protected.

VPGs can be created at the protected site or the recovery site.

The virtual machines on the protected site can be defined under a single hypervisor host or under multiple hosts.

Configuring a VPG consists of defining 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: 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: The default storage volume to use for the recovered virtual machine files and for their data volumes. The storage used for the virtual machine definition is also used for the virtual machine data and can be overridden per virtual machine, as required. If a cluster is selected for the host, only storage that is accessible by every host in the cluster is displayed.
• Recovery: Recovery details include the networks to use for recovered virtual machines, such as the virtual networks, subnets, network security groups, instance families, and instance size to use for failover/move and failover test procedures, and the scripts, if any, that should run at the start or end of a recovery operation.
• NIC: Specify the network details to use for the recovered virtual machines after a live or test failover or migration.
• Retention Status: The retention properties that govern the VPG retention status, including the repository where the repository sets are saved.
• Summary: The details of the VPG configuration defined in the previous components.

You can protect most types of virtual machines running in a vCenter. However, you cannot protect virtual machines 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.

See also:

• Virtual Machines That Cannot Be Replicated
• The Role of the Journal During Protection
• What Happens After the VPG is Defined