JetStream DR protection components are the core building blocks that enable disaster recovery operations.

Figure 3: Component hierarchy.

A Protected Domain, or simply ‘Domain’ typically represents a multi-VM virtual application, which may or may not require replication consistency across VMs. The Protected Domain is a failover and failback unit. However, in the event of a partial or full zonal failure, an administrator may choose to split a Protected Domain and failover selected VMs. The Domains can later be merged back.

A Domain can include multiple independent VMs that are part of the same virtual application but do not require cross-VM replication consistency. Independent VMs can also operate as standalone instances, unrelated to any virtual application. All independent VM disks are configured to reside in a single, dedicated Consistency Group (CG).

A Recovery Instances Group (RIG) [a.k.a., Recovery Group (RG)] contains dependent VMs that require cross-VM replication consistency. All RG disks from all VMs are configured to participate in a single Consistency Group.

The following figure illustrates the data flow of pre-failure VM protection:

Figure 4: VM protection data flow.