Has there been a change in how Protection domain 'backups" function in AOS 7.3? Previously, if I needed to move a VM from one cluster to another, I'd simply create a backup protection domain, select the VM or VMs, take a snapshot and select the remote cluster. Once replication completed, I'd click Activate on the receiving cluster and the VMs would appear on the new cluster, all powered off. Now, I have a cluster that has AOS 7.3 on it, and that doesn't appear to work. With an ASYNC DR configured as backup, when I click Activate on the receiving cluster, it says it's active on the source, and I need to migrate. But migrate is disabled on the source cluster as it's not a disaster recovery PD, only backup. if I set it as disaster recovery, I can click Migrate, but this also requires the VM be powered off, or it powers off the VM (which is great for a DR scenario) but not for a VM move situation where I also need to do some citrix work. What changed?

With it being 7.3 you could do via protection policies and restore the recovery point. Or you could setup Move to sync and cutover. Haven't done as much with PDs recently since they seem to be going out of style

Dignifying this - and looking

I ended up just using the dr method. It works, just a different experience.

what's the end goal here?

Moving vm to a different cluster. The dr style and hitting migrate worked fine, was just odd on how it changed.

gotcha. Yep DR with migrate is a graceful move, DR with activate is a recreate in target (assumes death), Prism Central gives you cross cluster live migration along with modernised versions of the PD migrations/activations