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A company is implementing Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to protect their on-premises VMware virtual machines to Azure. They have configured the replication policy and installed the Mobility service on the source VMs. During the initial replication, they notice that the data transfer is significantly impacting their WAN bandwidth. They need to minimize the WAN bandwidth consumption during the initial replication phase without compromising the RTO/RPO for ongoing replication. Which method should they use for initial replication?
- AIncrease the bandwidth allocated to ASR in the network settings.
- BEnable data compression on the replication policy.
- CPerform a test failover to synchronize data more efficiently.
- DUse Azure Data Box for offline initial replication.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Use Azure Data Box for offline initial replication.
For large initial replications in ASR, especially when WAN bandwidth is limited, using Azure Data Box for offline initial replication can significantly reduce network impact by physically shipping the data to Azure.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Increasing bandwidth is the opposite of the requirement to minimize consumption and might not be feasible or cost-effective.
- B. Data compression helps but might not be sufficient for very large initial data sets and still uses WAN bandwidth.
- C. A test failover is used to validate replication and disaster recovery readiness, not to perform or optimize initial data synchronization.
ASR Offline Initial Replication
A method in Azure Site Recovery to transfer the initial, large dataset of protected items to Azure using a physical appliance like Azure Data Box, instead of over the network.
- Reduces WAN bandwidth consumption for large initial replications.
- Uses Azure Data Box or Data Box Heavy.
- Ideal for environments with low bandwidth or very large datasets.
Memory trick: When WAN is slow, ship the data box, then let ASR flow.