Licensing Behavior for Standalone vSphere Replication After Upgrading to VMware Live Site Recovery Converged Appliance

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

This article describes the licensing behavior after migrating from vSphere Replication 9.0.x to the VMware Live Site Recovery 9.0.4 or later converged appliance. It explains the purpose of the displayed VLSR evaluation license, clarifies the licensing requirements for standalone vSphere Replication, and outlines the implications of removing the VLSR solution registration when VLSR is not configured or in use.

After upgrading from vSphere Replication 9.0.x to VMware Live Site Recovery (VLSR) 9.0.4.x or later, administrators may observe one or more of the following:

• The Live Site Recovery solution appears under vCenter > Administration > Licensing > Licenses > Assets > Solutions displays an Evaluation License even though only vSphere Replication is being used.
• Questions arise regarding:
  • Whether a separate vSphere Replication license is required.
  • Whether licensing requirements changed after upgrading to version 9.x.
  • Whether existing vSphere or VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) licensing covers standalone vSphere replication.
  • Whether VMware Live Site Recovery (VLSR) licensing is required when only vSphere replication is configured.

Example environment:

• VMware Live Site Recovery / vSphere Replication 9.0.5
• vCenter Server 8.0 Update 3
• One combined VLSR appliance
• One production ESXi host
• One disaster recovery ESXi host
• vSphere Replication configured without VLSR orchestration

 

Environment

• VMware Live Site Recovery / vSphere Replication 9.0.4 or later

Cause

VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) has been rebranded to VMware Live Site Recovery (VLSR)

Beginning with VMware Live Site Recovery 9.0.4, VMware Live Site Recovery (VLSR) and vSphere Replication are deployed as a single converged appliance.

Verification:

Verify that the environment is using standalone replication only by confirming:

• No VLSR Site Pair is configured.
• No Protection Groups exist.
• No Recovery Plans exist.
• No Planned Migration workflows are configured.
• No Disaster Recovery orchestration has been implemented.
• Replication is configured directly between source and target ESXi hosts.

If all of the above are true, the environment is operating as standalone vSphere Replication.

Resolution

As part of this converged appliance architecture:

• The Site Recovery plugin is automatically registered with vCenter.
• The appliance includes SRM components regardless of whether SRM is configured.
• The Evaluation License displayed by the appliance applies only to SRM functionality, including:
  • Protection Groups
  • Recovery Plans
  • Planned Migration
  • Disaster Recovery orchestration
  • Site Recovery Manager workflows

The expiration of the SRM evaluation license only affects SRM functionality. If SRM features are not being used, it has no impact on standalone vSphere Replication operations and does not mean that vSphere Replication itself is running under an evaluation license.

Standalone vSphere Replication continues to be covered by the applicable:

• vSphere licensing
• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) licensing

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If you do not plan to use VLSR, the Live Site Recovery solution registration can be safely removed from the vCenter Server without impacting vSphere Replication functionality.