The automatic protection removal functionality is available for array-based replication protection groups and

Virtual Volumes

replication protection groups. The automatic protection removal is not supported for

vSphere Replication

protection groups. To use the automatic protection removal functionality, you must activate both the advanced settings for Automatic Protection and the advanced settings for Automatic Protection Removal. For more information see, Change the Automatic Protection Settings.

To become eligible for automatic protection removal, the virtual machines must fall into one of the following categories.

For array-based replication and
Virtual Volumes
replication protection groups, protected VMs for which the production VM is no longer registered in the
vCenter Server
inventory.
For array-based replication protection groups, protected VMs for which all disks, configuration files, snapshot descriptors, and other critical for failover file backed devices are provisioned or moved on datastores that are not part of the replicated datastore groups from which the protected VM is part of.
For
Virtual Volumes
replication groups, protected VMs for which all disks, configuration files, snapshot descriptors, and other critical for failover file backed devices are no longer part of
Virtual Volumes
replication groups that in turn are part of corresponding protection groups.

Once the protection is automatically removed, the virtual machine can become eligible for protection immediately in another protection group or after some time in the same protection group or a different protection group. If the the virtual machine is automatically protected within a configurable amount of time, the VM is associated with the last used recovery settings. If the virtual machine is automatically protected after that period of time, the VM uses the default recovery settings. The lifetime for the archived records for the recovery settings is configured through the

replication.archiveRecoverySettingsLifetime

advanced setting. You can use the

replication.archiveRecoverySettingsCleanupInterval

advanced setting to configure the time interval in minutes between separate executions of the task to cleanup old archived VM recovery settings. For more information, see Change Replication Settings.