Cannot reconfigure storage policies of a Virtual Machine with replication group

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Sometimes reconfiguration of a Virtual Machine with storage policy with replication groups through the "Edit Virtual Machine Storage Policies" dialog fails with an error "PBM error occurred during PreReconfigureCallback: Fault cause: vmodl.fault.SystemError". Also, when selecting the option to edit replication groups from the "Edit Virtual Machine Storage Policies" dialog, only the Virtual Machine home is listed without any Virtual Machine disks.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x

Cause

This is a UI bug fixed in VMware vSphere 7.0U3f.

Resolution

To resolve the issue, please follow the below steps:

• Migrate the Virtual Machine (using the "Change storage only" option) by choosing another datastore and e.g. its default storage policy.
• Then, migrate the Virtual Machine back to the desired datastore with the desired storage policy and replication group.
• After the migration, the Virtual Machine should already have the desired storage configuration. Additionally, the "Edit Virtual Machine Storage Policies" can now be used for future modifications.