[VMC] Placeholder virtual machines inaccessible at Recovery Site

Products

• VMware Cloud on AWS

Issue/Introduction

• Placeholder VMs used by Site Recovery Manager (SRM) are shown as inaccessible objects at the destination site (recovery site). 
• Protected VMs have a Protection Status of "Placeholder VM not found" within the Site Recovery Plugin at the protected site. 
  

Environment

• VMC on AWS
• Site Recovery Manager

Cause

• A cluster or host event that impacts vSAN and its ability to recover these objects. 
• Using a storage policy of "FTT=0" at the destination stie prior to any host failures. 
• Stale placeholder VMs or inaccessible datastores. 

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the placeholder VMs need to be restored.

Step 1:

1. Navigate to the destination site (recovery site) vCenter.
2. Locate the inaccessible VMs and remove them from the inventory.

Step 2:

1. At the source site (protected site), navigate to the Site Recovery Plugin UI.
2. Select the Site pairing and then navigate to Protection Groups.
3. Select the relevant protection group from the left pane.
4. Within the right pane, select the VM that shows a Protection Status of 'Placeholder VM not found'
5. At the top of the VM list, select 'RESTORE ALL PLACEHOLDER VMS'
   
6. Confirm that the placeholder VMs are no longer inaccessible after the operation completes.

Note: There is no impact to workloads when implementing the above steps. 

Additional Information

About Placeholder Virtual Machines