Replication error, Status OK but cannot configure replications

[gruden]

Hi All,

For some time I had a VR appliance running to manage a replication for a location in another country.  Now another office in that country wanted to do replications, so that required me to move the VRA for optimal network traffic routing.

Yesterday I shut off the old VRA and installed the new one.  I successfully re-configured replication for one large server, intending to let it run overnight and configure the remainder afterward.  I arrive in the office this morning to find that there were no configured replications, it had simply disappeared.  In attempting to get this working again I've rebooted the VRA, unregistered VRMS and re-added, and fixed a small time drift problem on the PSC, but nothing changes.

The status in vCenter says vSphere Replication is 'Enabled (OK)', but whenever I attempt to configure a VM for replication it says 'vSphere Replication Management Server is not accessible'.  Anything else I can look at to resolve this?

vCenter: 6.5U1

VRA: 6.5.1 (build 8136506)

[vmrale]

Hi,

look at this article:

States of vSphere Replication Displayed in the vSphere Web Client

It describes the error message you get.

How vSphere Replication service topology looks like in your environment ? One site - one vCenter or two sites - two vCenters? Look at this article:

How vSphere Replication Works

[gruden]

I saw that.  The status is 'Enabled (OK)' which, according to the document, no action needs to be taken.  However there is something wrong, as I get an error when attempting to configure a replication.

The replications I am attempting are same-site (vCenter) replications between two hosts in separate locations.

[vmrale]

As I understood you shut off the old VRA and installed the new one. If you didn't delete the old one, did you try to power it on and unregister first and then register the new one?

The message you have "The vSphere Replication Management Server is not accessible." indicates that the vSphere Replication extension is registered in the vCenter ServerExtension Manager, but the vSphere Replication appliance is missing or powered off, or the vSphere Replication Management service is not running. I assume that this registered extension in pointing on this old vSR Server and you cannot manage existing replications, or configure new replications to this new one.

[gruden]

Yes, but poking around I saw that unregistering it didn't really do that, it still showed up in the list of VR servers.

So I went through the effort of unregistering them both (again) and then removing them from inventory, then they both disappeared from the list.  I then re-deployed and... same problem.