vSphere Replication is extension to vCenter Server, and it provides hypervisor VM replication and recovery. vSphere Replication is an alternative to storage-based replication and can be used together with the Site Recovery Manager (SRM) for more advanced scenarios.

vSphere Replication can provide very cost-efficient, simple, and powerful replication at the VM level, using scheduled asynchronous file-based replication. It is more cost-efficient because it reduces both storage costs and replication costs, and also because it's included in all editions, starting from the Essential Plus edition.

It is important to emphasize that vSphere Replication is based on asynchronous replication with a minimal recovery point objective of 5 minutes. Based on this technical limitation, you can't protect your site in real time, and you might even lose data from the past 5 minutes if any problems occur on the primary site.

One interesting aspect is that vSphere Replication does not use VM snapshots at. On the other hand, it is strictly dependent on the vCenter Server for its configuration and management.