More replication destinations?

[averylarry]

I'd love to be able to replicate to -- for instance -- a windows file share (or local disk or NFS share or basically anything other than a datastore). It's much easier for offsite replication (if you don't have a suitable WAN link), and (in comparison to backup files) it uses "native" VMware files, so there's no need in the event of a disaster to have a Veeam server and import the backups or whatever needs to be done (and you can test it with VMware Player or whatever the current thing is).

I suppose, if I'm making a wish list, that this type of replication would also lend itself nicely to an overwrite type of replication -- where anything in the destination location is automatically deleted and a new replica is made each time.

v6 perhaps?

[averylarry]

Humility is a good thing. VM Copy does what I want. I don't know if there's any advantage to the replication process doing something similar.

[Vitaliy S.]

Hello Ted,

We haven't introduced more replication targets mostly because thin provisioned disks is VMFS-specific feature, and such disks simply cannot be stored in thin form to "regular" file systems like NTFS or ext3, which are unaware about thin provisioning.

As for VM Copy jobs then it should be exactly what you're looking for. However there are certain differences you should be aware about, please take a look at this topic: VM Copy vs Replication

Thanks.

[averylarry]

Thank you.

Any chance for 2Gb sparse files (I think that's what it's called) as an option in VM Copy to reduce the disk space used on the destination? Probably pointless in comparison to doing a backup since 2Gb sparse files have to be converted to thick or thin before ESXi can use them (comparable to loading Veeam/importing the backup/doing a restore).

Something comforting, though, about having .vmdk files.