Alike's VM Replication (Standard)

Please note: this article refers to Alike's Standard Replication functionality, and does not cover Alike DR's Enhanced Replication features.

Alike provides a powerful feature set with its VM Replication.  This job type has several use cases which can be extremely helpful for the resourceful administrator.  As always, all of the following features are available in the Free edition, as well as the fully licensed version, the difference is simply how many XenServer hosts you are able to work with.

Scheduled VM replication to one XenServer/Pool to another.
This configuration allows you to schedule one or more VMs to be replicated to a separate environment.  If used with the "Overwrite target" option in the job settings, it will allow you to keep a cold standby copy of your VMs on a secondary system that get refreshed on a schedule. 

Scheduled Export of VMs to a local folder
This scenario will allow an administrator to schedule a recurring backup job that simply takes a snapshot of a VM and exports it to a folder.  Every time it runs it will overwrite any previously created version.  This allows you to easily maintain a collection of your VMs in a portable .xva format.

Scheduled VM Migration
Under this configuration you are able to schedule one or more VMs to migrate to another XenServer/Pool.  Once fully migrated, the source VMs will be shutdown and the target systems will be started up.  This can help accommodate an off-hours migration of batches of VMs.


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