Hyper-V Replica
The purpose of Hyper-V Replica is to provide a mechanism for the extremely rapid recovery of a lost virtual machine. As mentioned in the previous sections on backup, it is not a backup solution and does not replace the need for such a solution. The simple description of replica is that it creates another virtual machine on another Hyper-V host that is a ready-to-run clone of the source virtual machine and asynchronously updates the replica's VHDs. Hyper-V Server 2012 allows you to make a single replica; R2 allows you to chain to a second replica system.
Replica works by first duplicating the source system and then actively updating the replica as the source changes. The original copy includes the virtual machine configuration and disk contents. Ongoing replication contains only the changes made to the disk's contents. Replica works at the block storage level and only tracks changes instead of repeatedly copying the entire virtual machine. It does have the power...
