Frustrations with installing vSphere Replication 8.2

[2000DXP]

Hello, hope you are well.

I am wondering if anybody can help me. I am running a VMware vCenter Appliance with embedded Platform Services Controller.

Version 6.5.0 Build 12863991

I was running an old version of vSphere Replication server but have decommissioned it and wanting to deploy a clean install of vSphere Replication 8.2. The problems I am having are:-

1. Once I deploy a new Replication Appliance and connect to the VAMI, if I click on the configuration tab under VRS, I see a pop up box with an error saying "local variable 'host' referenced before assignment".  See attached picture:-

When this happens the VAMI interface seems to hang and I can't seem to do much in terms of configuration. I have tried using IE 11 and Chrome. Also in the right corning of the browser it shows a timer saying gathering isolation info (Or something like that).

2. The second problem is when I deploy an additional vSphere Replication Server 8.2. I get the exact same issues as above on a new appliance, but on the additional server, if I try to generate and install a new certificate, it seems to act like it has done this, but the new certificate is still using the IP Address as the name on it instead of the servers configured hostname.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,

Dave

[daphnissov]

I would first try to re-deploy the vR appliance. Maybe you have an incomplete download or there was a deployment problem. For deploying vR, you need to target a specific host and a specific datastore. Not a host cluster and not a datastore cluster.

[2000DXP]

Hi Daphnissov, hope you are well.

Thanks for your suggestion, but I don't have a test environment to try this out at the moment. I do get the same error when deploying an additional vSphere Replication Server which ultimately uses the same main OS image file.

At present the actual replication function is working fine so I might just wait for the next version and do clean deployments of the appliance and server. I only have 6 servers replication within the same site so its not a huge mission to stop replication and re-configure from scratch.

Maybe a patch will be released which will fix the issue.

Regards,

Dave

[Richard_Yu]

this could be a issue that hms cannot resolve your hms ip address.

In order to confirm this issue, you can use a chrome and press f12 for a monitoring. there should be three commands send out to the hms.py after you click 'Configuration'. you can check which command report that error.

Guessing it should be command GetLocalIPsAndDnsNamesCommand,

did your HMS applicance configured nic correctly? you can login to the appliance and run command > ifconfig and get the output.

[2000DXP]

Hi Richard, hope you are well.

Thanks very much for the suggestion. I have tried this and do get some errors showing in the window F12 brings up, but I can't see anything that mentions "hms.py" in any of the tabs. The errors I seem to get are relating to java by the looks of it.

Regards,

Dave

[VIR2AL3X]

2000DXP​ - I too just had this issue but managed to work around it.  If you simply click OK to the message then manually enter in the required information, it will save successfully and start the VRM service.  Please see attached screenshot for the way I configured in a test environment. Hope this helps

-virtualex-

[2000DXP]

Hi Alex, hope you are well.

Thanks very much for the time to share that. I can confirm that the system is up and running, all be it just on a single network card at the moment and we are looking into isolating the management and replication traffic.

Out of interest, if you log out of the VAMI and go back in, do you still get the error message pop up on the screen when you click on the configuration tab?

Regards,

Dave

[VIR2AL3X]

2000DXP​ - yes, the issue still presents itself if you click on the "Configure" tab.  We have an open SR on this internally and I will check back and provide any updates as I get/see them.  I hope this workaround was at least helpful, and if so, please give a thumbs up, mark as helpful, and/or mark my previous comment as answered.  Stay tuned!...

[Richard_Yu]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the information and time to share that.

This issue has been confirmed. it is caused by a un-resolvable VR IP address. As a workaround, you can set the VRM hostname to the IP address of VR appliance.

This issue has been tracked in an internal bug system.

Thank you again for your time and effort to help locate this issue!

Regards,

Richard

[2000DXP]

Hi Richard / Alex, thanks for the replies and the help.

I was also wondering if either of you has been able to test and investigate the other issue I am experiencing with the additional deployment of a vSphere Replication Server from my original post.

"2. The second problem is when I deploy an additional vSphere Replication Server 8.2. I get the exact same issues as above on a new appliance, but on the additional server, if I try to generate and install a new certificate, it seems to act like it has done this, but the new certificate is still using the IP Address as the name on it instead of the servers configured hostname."

So from my implementation, the certificate gets renewed when I trigger the "Generate and install" button on the additional deployed vSphere Replication Server because the issued date changes and the browser detects an untrusted certificate. But it always gets renewed with the IP Address as the name on the certificate instead of the configured hostname.

Regards,

Dave

[Richard_Yu]

when 'generate and install' a self-signed certificate, hms will try to load the host name from hms configure file /opt/vmware/hms/conf/hms-configuration.xml and get the cname from the field 'hms-address'. if needed, you can change the configure file there.

[VBelka]

Hello

Fixed this probelm. I had to modify /etc/hosts as suggested here VMware Knowledge Base

# VAMI_EDIT_BEGIN

# Generated by Studio VAMI service. Do not modify manually.

127.0.0.1 localhost

<vcsa address ip> <vcsa fqdn> <vcsa hostname>

# VAMI_EDIT_END

I know it is for vCenter but it works for VR too. The simplest solution i believe is to create a PTR record