Virtual machines fail to start with a timeout error when performing a test failover

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

If you are conducting a Site Recovery Manager (SRM) test failover and the destination vCenter Server cluster and the recovery site have DRS enabled, you may experience these symptoms:

• Virtual machines fail to start.
• Virtual machines do not power on.
• An error message indicates that a timeout occurred.
• Virtual machines start successfully after the test failover.
• The SRM log files at the recovery site may contain an entry similar to:
  
  [10:14:44.827 04000 warning 'RSVm-21200-Task'] MultipleRecoveryTask::Init: Unexpected exception 'class Vmacore::TimeoutException' Operation timed out
  
  Note: By default, the log files are located in C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\Logs. For more information, see Location of Site Recovery Manager log files (1021802).

Environment

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.0.x

Resolution

This issue occurs if Site Recovery Manager reaches the limit of tasks it can run in parallel. By default, the maximum number of tasks is 10.

This issue is resolved in VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0.2. For more information about this version, see the VMware Site Recovery Manager 4.0.2 Release Notes. You can download the latest release from VMware Download Center.

Workaround

To work around this issue when you do not want to upgrade, increase the maximum task limit on the recovery site from the default of 10 to 20.

To increase the limit:

1. Open vmware-dr.xml (located in C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager\config\vmware-dr.xml) in a text editor.
2. Locate the section:
   
   <vmacore>
   <threadPool>
   <initializeCOM>mta</initializeCOM>
   </threadPool>
   </vmacore>
   
   
3. Add this line after <initializeCOM>mta</initializeCOM> :
   
   <TaskMax>20</TaskMax>
   
   Note: This line increases the limit to 20.
   
   Example:
   
   <vmacore>
   <threadPool>
   <initializeCOM>mta</initializeCOM>
   <TaskMax>20</TaskMax>
   </threadPool>
   </vmacore>
   
   
4. Restart the VMware Site Recovery Manager service.

Additional Information

Location of Site Recovery Manager log files