VMware vSphere Replication 8.1 provides the following new features:
- Unified native hypervisor-based replication solution for on-premises environment and VMware Cloud on AWS.
- Streamlined HTML5 user interface. New HTML5 UI will enhance overall user’s experience by simplifying the deployment and usage, enabling streamlined workflows – unified replication and protection, site pairing, and more.
- Improved security, manageability and bringing operational simplicity by introducing Photon OS. The vSphere Replication virtual appliance uses Photon OS 2.0 as the guest operating system.
- Support for multiple VMware vSphere on-premises versions. vSphere Replication 8.1 is compatible with VMware vSphere 6.0 Update 3 and later, including 6.7.
VMware vSphere Replication 8.1 Release Notes
https://docs.vmware.com/en/vSphere-Replication/8.1/rn/vsphere-replication-81-release-notes.html
When vSphere Replication 8.1 is enabled on vCenter Server 6.7, we cannot see vSphere Replication icon on home page of vCenter Server, now vSphere Replication icon is replaced with Site Recovery icon.
Go to Site Recovery page, we can the vSphere Replication is enabled. We need to click “Open Site Recovery” if we setup the virtual machine replication.
Then it will re-direct to a new vSphere Replication administration page (HTML5).
Go to Replications tab, click New.
Select which VM needs to create the replication, Next.
Select the target site, Next. (In this demo, we select the local site)
Select the target datastore, Next.
Configure Recovery point object (RPO) or replication setting, Next.
NOTE: The lowest RPO is 5 minute. vSphere Replication 6.1 or above displays the 5 minute RPO setting.
Click Finish to create the VM replication session.
It starts data synchronization once when the replication session created.
Victor Wu
Chief Architect, Blogger, Author at Dell EMC Knowledge Sharing & Packt
Victor Virtualization 
Hello victor
I am Siony, I need your help,
we are working in a lab to know if with vsphere replication failover can be done or how to synchronize the destination VM with the VM origin with a single vcenter
we have a single instance of vcenter 6.7, 2 ESxi 6.7 virtualized and vsphere replication 8.1
You know how to do it?
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If the VM failover to the target site, you need re-protect the destination VM again at target site and replicate it to the source site.
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Hi Victor,
Have you tried adding additional VR node in SRM 8.1 ?
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I don’t try adding additional VR node in SRM 8.1, you have the issue on this configuration ? I only try in the previous version.
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Greetings, I have successfully installed and configured VR 8.1; I have test virtual machine at the target site in the datastore however it did not registered in the target vSphere environment. When I look at the target VM folder I did not see a .vmx file in which the VM can be registered. Am I missing something? I want to test the replication process and turn on the target VM while the source is powered off.
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When you perform the failover action of VM at the source site, the target VM can be registered automatically at the target site. You cannot edit anything of VM at the target site if the source VM is still protected at the source site.
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