This approach is recommended when there is not sufficient bandwidth between sites to complete replication in time. In this case it is recommended to create copies of the VM disks, transfer them to the destination site using external media, e.g. external USB hard drive. Once the files are copied to the target datastore vSphere Replication can be instructed to use them as replica seeds. The source and target disks will be scanned and only modified blocks of data will be transferred.
There is an issue with this approach. According to VMware documentation the virtual machine has to be powered off before creating disk copies of the original VM. In most environments this kind of action require Request for Change and it can take quite a while before this request approved.
As a workaround you can clone powered on VM, but the disks of the cloned VM will have new UUID. When vSphere Replication is instructed to use replica seeds it compares source and destination disks using two criteria - VMDK name and UUID. If one of them doesn't match in both disks you won't be able to configure vSphere Replication for this VM.
Therefore, I thought it is a nice opportunity to simplify process of creating replica seeds for vSphere Replication with no outage for virtual machines.
So, the whole process is quite simple:
1. Clone running VM. The cloned VM will need to have the same name to keep the disk names identical. Since VMs will have the same name they will need to be placed into different folders.
2. Run the script that will update the cloned VM's disk with original UUIDs.
There is an issue with this approach. According to VMware documentation the virtual machine has to be powered off before creating disk copies of the original VM. In most environments this kind of action require Request for Change and it can take quite a while before this request approved.
As a workaround you can clone powered on VM, but the disks of the cloned VM will have new UUID. When vSphere Replication is instructed to use replica seeds it compares source and destination disks using two criteria - VMDK name and UUID. If one of them doesn't match in both disks you won't be able to configure vSphere Replication for this VM.
Therefore, I thought it is a nice opportunity to simplify process of creating replica seeds for vSphere Replication with no outage for virtual machines.
So, the whole process is quite simple:
1. Clone running VM. The cloned VM will need to have the same name to keep the disk names identical. Since VMs will have the same name they will need to be placed into different folders.
2. Run the script that will update the cloned VM's disk with original UUIDs.
Looks like something i need! Is the only variable that is needed to be changed is "TestVM"?
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