Techniques involving replication of virtual machines at a target site are described. One representative technique includes an apparatus including a virtual machine configured to provide storage access requests targeting a virtual disk. A storage request processing module is coupled to the virtual machine to receive the storage access requests and update the virtual disk as directed by the storage access requests. A replication management module is coupled to the virtual machine to receive the storage access requests in parallel with the storage request processing module, and to store information associated with the storage access requests in a log file(s). The log file may be transferred to a destination as a recovery replica of at least a portion of the virtual disk.