You can include one or more protection groups in a recovery plan. A recovery plan specifies how

Site Recovery Manager

recovers the virtual machines in the protection groups that it contains.

You configure virtual machines and create protection groups differently depending on whether you use array-based replication,

vSphere Replication

, or

Virtual Volumes

replication. You cannot create protection groups that combine virtual machines for which you configured array-based replication with virtual machines for which you configured

vSphere Replication

, or

Virtual Volumes

replication. You can include a combination of array-based replication protection groups,

Virtual Volumes

replication protection groups, and

vSphere Replication

protection groups in the same recovery plan.

After you configure replication on virtual machines, you must assign each virtual machine to an existing resource pool, folder, and network on the recovery site. You can specify site-wide defaults for these assignments by selecting inventory mappings. For array-based replication protection groups,

Virtual Volumes

protection groups, and

vSphere Replication

protection groups, if you do not specify inventory mappings, you configure mappings individually for each virtual machine in the protection group.

After you create an array-based replication protection group,

Virtual Volumes

protection group, or a

vSphere Replication

protection group,

Site Recovery Manager

creates placeholder virtual machines on the recovery site and applies the inventory mappings to each virtual machine in the group. If

Site Recovery Manager

cannot map a virtual machine to a folder, network, or resource pool on the recovery site,

Site Recovery Manager

sets the virtual machine to the Mapping Missing status, and does not create a placeholder for it.

Site Recovery Manager

cannot protect virtual machines on which you did not configure or on which you incorrectly configured replication. In the case of array-based replication, this is true even if the virtual machines reside on a protected datastore.