• This topic has 1 reply, 2 voices, and was last updated March 3, 2020 by Alexandre C.

Zerto and vCenter snapshots

  • Helpdesk G
    March 3, 2020 11:36:02 AM

    Regarding VM snapshots, I read :  …”Zerto does not take VM Snapshots into account (a VMware delta VMDK file is not replicated to the DR site!). Therefore, we can go back in time thanks to the Zerto Journal, but we cannot revert to a snapshot, which is older than the Zerto Journal.”…

    I’m not 100% sure what the above means.

    • So, we can create a vCenter snapshot and delete it afterwards (without using it) and this will not interfere with Zerto replication?    -> probably correct?
    • But what happens if the Windows Server upgrade fails and the server doesn’t boot?  Can we revert back to the vCenter snapshot? -> probably possible
      =>       And will we have to do something in Zerto, after the snapshot revert,  to get replication running correctly again? -> unknown

     

    Last but not least, is Zerto making vCenter snapshots obsolete?  In other words, can we use it to restore a specific VM (for example, when a Win update or app upgrade breaks the booting of Windows Server on the VM)?  We only need to make sure to recover the replicated VM to a Recovery Point that was made BEFORE the update took place.

    Thanks!

    Alexandre C
    March 3, 2020 09:43:42 PM

    Zerto does not replicate VMware snapshots. ZVR replicates IOs to the recovery site and treats the snapshots in vSphere as irrelevant. The recovery VM, therefore, does not have any associated snapshots. Because ZVR replicates the live state of the VM, recovering the VM recovers it a state where there are no snapshots in the VM config file nor any snapshot volumes on the recovery datastore(s).

    Deleting a snapshot from the protected VM has no effect on the recovery site, as nothing changes live state of the VM. If the protected VM is rolled back to a previous snapshot, the live state of the VM has changed. The VPG will no longer be in a consistent state and a Force Sync must be completed in ZVR to re-synchronize the VPG.
    Starting in Zerto 6.5, the Force Sync is performed automatically when Zerto observes the rollback being performed in vCenter.

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