Storage Replica Documentation

[Stephen Normandin]

PSA to Microsoft - Storage Replica is very poorly documented overall. At a minimum, there needs to be descriptions of the various replication statuses returned by Get-SRGroup, and a recommendation to add a startup script for "Get-SRGroup | Sync-SRGroup" to recover after a reboot. Some information about monitoring and alerts in the event of sync failure would be good as well. Currently it is easy enough to set up a replication, but it is very difficult to ensure that the replication is continuously healthy and that you can rely on it in event of a failover scenario.

[#2]

I've found that any reboot or networking hiccup kicks the replication into ReplicationSuspended status, which requires a "Get-SRGroup | Sync-SRGroup" command to restart the sync. To get it running reliably, I've found I need the aforementioned startup script to run that command after each reboot, as well as monitoring the event log as described here: https://muzahid.medium.com/windows-storage-replica-monitor-using-powershell-or-any-windows-event-mon... and scripting "Get-SRGroup | Sync-SRGroup" into the response to Event ID 5014 as well. There should be a heads up in the Microsoft documentation of Storage Replica that this is required, so users don't find out much later that their replications have been in ReplicationSuspended status for a long time. And make sure they know what that status means and what to do with it.