Moving replica to different cluster

[GabesVirtualWorld]

Hi
Currently replicating some VMs to Cluster-A but now the hosts in the cluster will be removed, upgraded and added to a different existing cluster. Is there an easy way to change the replication job to point to the new cluster without having to do a full replication again or a full rescan of the blocks again?

I do know that I can do the following:
1- at vmware level move the replica to the new cluster
2- repoint the replica job to the new cluster as destination and use the moved replica for seeding. But..... wouldn't the first run scan the full source and target VM again? Can I prevent this?

[Gostev]

Hi, Garbie

You cannot prevent this as the VMs newly registered in the new cluster will have their CBT reset.

Thanks!

[GabesVirtualWorld]

Hi, Garbie

You cannot prevent this as the VMs newly registered in the new cluster will have their CBT reset.

Thanks!

Even though it is the same vCenter? But I was afraid so already

On what actions does VMware reset the CBT ?

[GabesVirtualWorld]

Never mind, found it: In some cases, such as a power failure or hard shutdown while virtual machines are powered on, CBT might reset and lose track of incremental changes. In vSphere 4.1 and prior, Cold Migration (but not Storage vMotion) could reset but not disable CBT. In vSphere 5.x, Storage vMotion resets CBT.


So if vm is migrated without storage vmotion to new cluster in same vcenter, it "might" not be reset?

[Gostev]

Strictly technically speaking, I don't see how cold migration can impact CBT data consistency, so I see no reason for VMware to reset it.

[Gostev]

In any case, this is a moot point. Even if you reconfigure the existing job in Veeam, and map it to replicas moved to the new cluster (I must say I've never actually tested this scenario, as replica mapping was designed strictly for the initial job seeding use case), the job will still want to read them entirely. This is because the job just cannot be sure if those are the same VMs as before.