According to the VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide, a vSAN stretched cluster provides zero data loss (RPO = 0) and automated failover between two availability zones within the same region. It ensures continuous availability of workloads with minimal performance impact. The guide specifies:

“Stretching a vSAN cluster automatically initiates VM restart and recovery and has a low recovery time for unplanned failures. The solution supports synchronous replication with a maximum inter-site latency of 5ms RTT.”

This design fully satisfies the RPO (≤5 minutes) and RTO (≤30 minutes) requirements while minimizing performance impact, as all writes are synchronously mirrored between sites.

In contrast:

Backup-based recovery (A) and asynchronous replication (B) cannot achieve RPO < 5 minutes.

Array-based synchronous replication (D) is not applicable to vSAN-only VCF environments and introduces additional complexity.

Therefore, the vSAN stretched cluster is the recommended and VMware-validated solution for meeting near-zero RPO/RTO and automated failover requirements in a business-critical VCF environment.

References (VMware Cloud Foundation documents):

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.2 Design Guide — “Stretching vSAN Clusters Across Availability Zones.” (pp. 1039–1042)

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.1 Architecture Overview — “Disaster Avoidance and Recovery with vSAN Stretched Clusters.” (pp. 290–292)