SITE AND STORAGE TIER AWARE REFERENCE RESOLUTION

A site and storage tier aware technique replicates data as one or more recovery points (RPs) from a primary site to a secondary site in a multi-site data replication environment. A storage tier aware reference resolver determines (i) an amount of RP data transfer associated with the replication and (ii) location information associated with a cloud storage tier storing the RP data in an object store. The storage tier aware reference resolution aspect provides two additional factors to consider when retrieving data of a reference RP from cloud storage: (iii) the time (duration) needed to retrieve the data and (iv) the cost (financial expense) needed to retrieve the data. In addition, a site aware reference resolution aspect of the technique determines an optimal RP to use as the reference RP and involves consideration of (v) which RPs have been replicated from the primary site to the secondary site and (vi) which RPs have been retained for storage at the sites.