Virtual machine replication

Virtual machine replication is a brand new feature that has been added from the Proxmox VE 5.0 release. This is a very useful feature for a single-node Proxmox environment where VM disk images reside locally on the same computer node the VMs actually run from. With this option, VMs can be replicated to a different node in real time should the primary node go down for any number of reasons. In such a scenario, the second node with a replica of the VMs can be brought online, thus minimizing downtime significantly.

It is very important to note here that this replication will only work when the VM disk image is stored on a local ZFS storage.

The storage must be attached to a Proxmox cluster using the ZFS storage plugin, as shown in the following screenshot:

The replication simply will not work when the disk image is on any other storage. Even if the disk image is stored on a ZFS storage with NFS share, replication will not work. In such a scenario, when trying to create replication, the following error message will be displayed:

ZFS is needed because the replication uses ZFS snapshots to perform replication, minimizing network traffic. A new command line tool, pvesr, has been added to perform all replication tasks. When we manage replication through the GUI, it just leverages the pvesr command.

It should be noted here that the replication feature is presented as a technology preview in Proxmox 5.0, but from our extensive lab testing, it has proven very stable. If you have a single-node Proxmox deployment and want to use replication as a primary backup strategy, then doing tests to familiarize yourself with the replication process is highly recommended.

Table of Contents for Virtual machine replication

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Table of Contents for
Virtual machine replication