vSphere Replication is a great tool to replicate VMs from one vCenter server to another. Furthermore, it’s a cost-effective solution for Small and Medium Businesses since it’s included in all editions with the exception of the basic Essentials kit bundle.

However, vSphere Replication has not been without its time-consuming management overheads (Any vSphere Replication administrator will know what I’m talking about here, I’m sure!)

VMware has listened to their customers are as of vSphere Replication & SRM 8.3 there are many welcomed improvements.

Virtual Machine Disk Resizing

Finally! – vSphere Replication 8.3 includes source disk resizing within the user interface.

This is all done without having to perform any manual tasks. Just resize the disk and vSphere Replication will apply those changes to the copy at the recovery site without you having to do any extra work!

Automatic Protection of Virtual Machines

As of Site Recovery Manager 8.3, we have the option to automatically add VMs to protection groups. If the datastore which the VM is vMotioned to, or is built on, is part of a protection group, SRM will ensure this VM is protected. This is all done without having to log in to the SRM interface and without adding the VMs into the protection group manually.

vSphere Replication Config export & import

SRM 8.2 gives us the ability to export and import the SRM configuration to make SRM application migration or restore as seamless as possible, without having to manually document all the relevant SRM configuration settings.

As of version 8.3, this same functionality exists for vSphere Replication too. The export/import configuration functionality will only be available via CLI but I wouldn’t be surprised if this is made available in the UI and via some kind of scheduler (like the vCenter Server Appliance) in the future.

But wait, there’s more!

As always there are many other features which might be beneficial to you and your organisation, some of those I have listed below.

• vSphere Replication Performance improvements – Initial Sync & ongoing replications
• Significantly Improved User Interface
• vROps Management Pack improvements
• vVol Integration
• vRO plug-ins

But be sure to check out the full VMware blog article on all of this new functionality.

If you are looking to install vSphere Replication 8.3 (Or to see disk resizing in action with no manual intervention), check out my latest YouTube video: