• This topic has 6 replies, 4 voices, and was last updated March 1, 2016 by Saurabh S.

Exclude Volume from replication

  • DJ R
    January 14, 2016 07:24:29 PM

    Does anyone know if there is a way to exclude a single volume when replicating a VMware Guest? The reason for this is the disk i/o on this server is so high that the replication of the pre-seeded disk never completes. What we want to do is exclude the disk with the high i/o and if necessary restore that volume from backup if needed. I know this is not true failover if something happens, but we cannot get that volume to replicate.

    January 14, 2016 10:14:17 PM

    You mention pre-seeding, so I want to clarify what you’ve done so far. You have tried copying the VM to a portable drive and taking  it to the target location and uploading it there. Then, in Zerto Virtual Replication, you mapped the source VM volumes to the target location of the .vmdks (or vhds) and tried to let Zerto perform a delta sync and it’s not completing. Correct?

    Also, you can exclude volumes from replicating by identifying them as swap disks when you edit a VM in a VPG. This will tell Zerto not to replicate that volume (after the initial replication completes). See: http://s3.amazonaws.com/zertodownload_docs/Latest/Zerto%20Virtual%20Replication%20Zerto%20Virtual%20Manager%20%28ZVM%29%20-%20vSphere%20Online%20Help/index.html#page/ScreenReference%2FConfigureVolume.html

    Senior Technical Architect at Zerto
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    DJ R
    January 14, 2016 10:34:46 PM

    Correct, I copied the VM to the remote location, loaded up the vmdk and pointed the disk to the pre-seeded volume. The initial sync will never complete, it just keeps going and going, sometimes will go to around 33% and then just starts over again and never completes.

    January 14, 2016 10:44:17 PM

    I’d recommend you open a case with Zerto support and let them look at it. They can help you figure out the bottleneck and some possible corrective actions to get it working.

    Senior Technical Architect at Zerto
    DJ R
    January 14, 2016 11:48:25 PM

    I did contact support about this and we did some configuration planning and it turns out that this particular server needs at least 40MB’s between the sites to allow the sync, just this server alone, not to mention all the others we have. Since assigning 40MB just to one server is not possible we were trying other alternatives. Just cant get this server to replicate.

    Justin P
    February 18, 2016 11:27:43 PM

    When will the ability to exclude completely, be available? I have immediate need to exclude a disk and not have to mess with the swap or initial sync. 2tb disk? It won’t sync….ever

    Saurabh S
    March 1, 2016 09:53:16 PM

    The VMX file for your VMs contains all the information about your VMs, including hte number of VMDKs, etc. Removing disk from the VMs would mean that the VMX file would need to be edited by Zerto which I am sure they would rather not do to avoid potential corrupted vmx files, etc.

     

    As for the issue here, I see a mention of INITIAL sync. If you are using the pre-seed data, you should be going through a delta sync operation and not an initial sync. I think you need to review why your VPG is going into an Initial sync. When that is resolved, you should be able to do a delta sync and configure the disk you do not want to configure as a swap disk (see the VMware Administration guide regarding swap disk in Zerto).

    Also, if you want to long to use the pre-seed data, you will accumulate more changes which will then need to be replicating causing more bandwidth.

     

    Hope this helps,

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