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PowerStoreOS 3.0 brings support for asynchronous replication for VMware vSphere Virtual Volumes (vVols) based virtual machines. This feature uses VMware Storage Policies and requires VMware Site Recovery Manager instances at both sites. Asynchronous replication for vVols-based VMs uses the same snapshot-based asynchronous replication technology as native block replication.
When a VMware Storage Policy with PowerStore replication is assigned to a vVol-based VM, a replication session is created on PowerStore for VM vVol resources in the same resource group. You can select VMware resource groups when a VMware Storage Policy is configured for a VM. VMware SRM uses these VMware resource groups to manage the protected VMs in Replication Groups. An SRM Recovery Plan controls the PowerStore replication session for vVols in a replication group during test failover, failover, and reprotection.
After a VM has a VMware Storage Policy assigned, and the Resource Group is in a Replication Group with Protection Plan in SRM, a placeholder VM on the destination vCenter and PowerStore is created. The storage container for the placeholder VM is part of the site pair configuration in SRM. This ability enables you to perform many operations in VMware SRM such as synchronize, pause, resume, test, cleanup, run, and re-protect. This functionality gives granular control at the VM level for validation, testing, disaster recovery, and other pertinent use cases. For more information about vVol replication, see the PowerStore Info Hub for PowerStore and VMware white papers, and VMware Site Recovery Manager product documentation.