In this post we will setup vSphere replication to use an external SQL database. By default when you setup the vSphere replication appliance, it will use an embedded database to hold replication information but we can change that by using a manual configuration and putting in the proper settings. That’s what we will walk through now.

1. Log in to SQL server and login to SQL Management Studio
   
   
2. Create the VRMS user login by going under Security>Logins. Right click and select New Login
3. Create the user
4. Create the VRMS database by right clicking Databases and select New Database.
5. Name the database and make sure you make the VRMS user the owner of the database
6. Go back to the properties of the VRMS user and look at the User Mapping for the DR_VRMS database. Leave dbo as the default User and Default Schema
7. Log in to VRMS appliance
   
8.  Go to Configuration tab
9. Select Manual configuration and enter in the database host, username and password information
10. Click Save and Restart Service