Configuring new replications fail in Cloud Director Availability when using a vSphere Essentials license

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• Configuring new replications in Cloud Director Availability fail, and you see a similar error:

Operation aborted due to an unexpected error.

• This issue occurs when the vSphere environment in one or more of the sites uses a vSphere Essentials license.
• In /opt/vmware/h4/replicator/log/replicator.log on the Cloud Director Availability On-Premises or Cloud Replicator Appliance, you see entries similar to:

2020-09-23 19:01:04.560 ERROR - [UI-<id>] [pc-task-monitor-5] c.v.h.r.monitoring.JobTaskUpdateHandler  : Task <task-id> has failed.

com.vmware.vim.binding.vmodl.fault.NotEnoughLicenses: License not available to perform the operation.
...
2020-09-23 19:01:04.561  WARN - [UI-<id>] [pc-task-monitor-5] c.v.h.c.e.ExceptionConversionService     : Unable to convert exception. Using fallback exception instead.

com.vmware.vim.binding.vmodl.fault.NotEnoughLicenses: License not available to perform the operation.
...
2020-09-23 19:01:04.564 ERROR - [UI-<id>] [pc-task-monitor-5] com.vmware.h4.jobengine.JobExecution     : Task <task-id> (WorkflowInfo{type='setupSource', resourceType='replication', resourceId='H4-<h4-id>', isPrivate=false, resourceName='null'}) has failed

com.vmware.vdr.error.exceptions.GenericServerException: Operation aborted due to an unexpected error.

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vCloud Availability 3.5.x
VMware vCloud Availability 3.0.x
VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.x

Cause

This issue occurs because Cloud Director Availability relies on vSphere Replication technology to synchronize the source and destination virtual machines, which is not available for vSphere Essentials licenses.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, configure the underlying vSphere environments with a license that supports vSphere Replication features in all participating sites.

For more information on the vSphere Replication licensing requirements, see the vSphere Replication Licensing section of the vSphere Replication documentation.

Additional Information

For more information on available features with the different vSphere licenses, see the License Management section of the VMware vSphere Compute Virtualization Licensing, Pricing and Packaging whitepaper.