HPE SimpliVity RapidDR is a disaster recovery orchestration tool that automates and simplifies the recovery process of VMs protected by HPE SimpliVity backups. It can be used in the event of disaster to efficiently restore VMs across the primary and secondary sites, which consist of multiple HPE SimpliVity nodes12.
HPE SimpliVity RapidDR requires VMware vCenter Server, a centralized management platform for VMware vSphere environments, to perform the recovery operations. VMware vCenter Server is licensed per instance, which means that each vCenter Server installation requires a separate license3 .
To reduce the vCenter Server license cost, a customer can use only a single vCenter Server instance to manage the HPE SimpliVity federation, which is a group of HPE SimpliVity clusters that share the same configuration and policies. This deployment scenario is possible when the federation is managed centrally, which means that all the HPE SimpliVity nodes are registered to the same vCenter Server instance, regardless of their physical location .
The other options are not valid for reducing the vCenter Server license cost. The number of VMs covered by a single recovery plan does not affect the vCenter Server license requirement, as long as the VMs are managed by the same vCenter Server instance. Enabling Enhanced Linked Mode for vCenter allows multiple vCenter Server instances to share information and provide a single pane of glass view, but it does not eliminate the need for separate licenses for each vCenter Server instance. Disabling Intelligent Workload Optimizer, a feature that balances the VM workload across the HPE SimpliVity cluster, has no impact on the vCenter Server license requirement.
References:
1: HPE SimpliVity RapidDR 2: HPE SimpliVity RapidDR - Starter License - 25 VMs - CDW 3: VMware vCenter Server - VMware : VMware vCenter Server Licensing, Pricing and Packaging : [HPE SimpliVity Federation Design and Scaling Guide] : [HPE SimpliVity with HPE StoreOnce Reference Architecture] :
[HPE SimpliVity Data Virtualization Platform] : [HPE SimpliVity Intelligent Workload Optimizer] : [HPE SimpliVity Stretched Cluster Guide] : [HPE SimpliVity Remote RapidDR Software Installation and Startup Service]