Size on replicas?

[yps]

Hi, is the size on replicas = all changes that CBT monitors?
What is normal on windows machines? How long time in replicas could I save on DR site?

Thanks, Magnus

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Magnus,

The size of the replica snapshot (restore point) equals to the size of all changes occurred on your source VM since its last replication cycle. It's hard to say what is the usual change rate for Windows VMs, as this number heavily depends on the application type installed on these VMs (for example, Exchange VMs produce a lot more changes rather than static file server VMs does). However, If you want to get a ballpark number, then I believe you should expect around 10% of VM changes every day.

You can keep VM snapshot for as long as you want, but for long term archiving it's better to use backup jobs instead. Anyway, if you take a look at the replication job settings, you will see that our recommended (default) value is 7 restore points for the week, assuming you run your replication jobs on daily schedule.

Thanks!

[Gostev]

I like to split VMs into 2 main categories based on their I/O pattern. Most VMs usually produce as low as 2% of changes daily (on average) - however, VMs running I/O intensive applications (such as Exchange or SQL) can update 30% of its virtual disks blocks in a single day...