Hello,

I currently have 2 host servers and replication is working fine between them.   The customer would like a cheap offsite storage solution that would allow them to easily transport a hard drive backup offsite once per week.

I was wondering if we could extend replication to a PC with a toaster/drop in external drive.  The VHDx files would get copied there.   My concern is that when they swap out the drives - what will happen - is there a way around issues from that?

Backup is generally best done using backup software.  It would be much cleaner to perform a backup once a week.  Windows Server Backup is part of the operating system so there is no additional cost. 

Can the other be made to work?  Most likely.  Which requires less management? Backup.

When you swap drives you have the default Windows behavior.

The different drive can be detected as a different volume, given a different drive letter, and so on.

While this is one way to roll some backup of your DR on the cheap, it is not without caveots.  And thus is not id10t proof.

But yes, there can be a second hop replica.  However, it is still a replica - it has metadata that tags this to prevent it from being inappropriately being brought back online.

If you want a backup - do that at the source.

Tim stated the rest.

Hi Boe,

I suppose we could copy the VHDx files to the external driver manually. Remember to turn off the VM before copying.

But it is not an automatic method.

Best Regards,

Leo