The VRA is a small VM deployed by Zerto on each ESXi host. It intercepts writes at the hypervisor level and replicates them to the recovery site in near real-time.

Key points

  • One VRA is needed per ESXi host that has protected VMs on it
  • If a VM migrates to a host without a VRA, replication will fail
  • VRAs are managed through the ZVM (Zerto Virtual Manager)

Troubleshooting

If a VPG shows errors, check:

  1. What ESXi host the VM is on (via vSphere)
  2. Whether that host has a VRA installed (check ZVM → Setup)
  3. If a VRA is missing, it needs to be deployed on that host