What is the difference between metro availability and Near Sync?

Hi @Jafar 

NearSync replication has recovery schedules with an RPO between 1–15 minutes. Called NearSync schedules, they are also practically asynchronous schedules with 15–minute or lower RPOs. You can configure the schedules for even 1 minute.

Some of the advantages of NearSync replication are as follows.

• Protecting mission-critical applications.
• Securing data with minimal loss in a disaster.
• Providing more granular control during the restore process.
• No latency or distance requirements for fully synchronous replication.
• Allowing resolution of a disaster event in minutes.

To implement the NearSync replication schedules, Nutanix introduces a technology called lightweight snapshots (LWS) to generate snapshots that continuously replicate incoming data generated by workloads running on the active cluster. The LWS snapshots are generated at the metadata level only. These snapshots are stored in the LWS store, which is allocated on the SSD tier. The LWS store is automatically allocated when you configure NearSync replication schedule for a protection domain.

Here is the Data protection guide for NearSync for your reference: Data Protection with NearSync Replication (1–15 minutes RPO)

Metro Availability allows administrators to extend hypervisor clustering technologies across datacenters. We call this type of configuration a stretched cluster, and it helps to minimize downtime during unplanned outages. Metro Availability also supports the migration of virtual machines (VMs) across sites, using technologies such as vMotion, which means that you have zero downtime while transitioning workloads between datacenters.

With Metro Availability, Nutanix delivers an entire spectrum of solutions to provide the data and application protection you need to fulfill your SLAs and meet your recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPOs and RTOs). Nutanix has built safeguards into the platform for everything from minor events, such as individual VM deletion, to major ones, including unplanned datacenter failure.

Please refer these Documentation guide for  Metro Availability for more details:

• Metro Availability
• Conditions for Implementing Data Protection (Metro Availability)