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Reusing virtual hard disks

Virtual hard disks (VHDs) created by a virtual recovery protection job can be re-used. This can be useful for pre-staging data on the target over a LAN connection, and then moving your target Hyper-V server to your remote disaster recovery site after the initial synchronization. When you re-use an existing VHD file, Double-Take Console performs a difference mirror instead of a full mirror.

To reuse a VHD:

  1. Create a protection job over the LAN connection.
  2. Allow the job to complete the initial synchronization.
  3. Delete the protection job. When prompted, choose the option to Keep and register the replica virtual machine.
  4. From the Hyper-V manager, delete the replica virtual machine. Doing this will delete the virtual machine configuration but will keep the associated VHD files.
  5. Shut down and move the Hyper-V target server to your remote disaster recovery site.
  6. After the target server is online, create a new protection job for the same source server used in the original job.
  7. During job creation, when you select the replica path, if a VHD file with the same name exists, Double-Take Console will display a prompt asking if you would like to re-use the existing VHD. Select Yes.
  8. Double-Take Console will re-use the existing VHD files and perform a file difference mirror over the LAN.