Reconfiguration of replication fails if destination datastore is changed from VVOL to VMFS or NFS

Products

• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Reconfigure replication task fails with an error message saying that file cannot be created

Environment

VMware vSphere Replication 8.x

Cause

When the destination datastore for some virtual machine disks is changed from VVOL to VMFS or NFS, the reconfigure replication task will fail because the replica disks cannot be moved from VVOL to VMFS/NFS datastores.

Resolution

This is a known issue, affecting vSphere Replication 8.2 No resolution is available at this time, see the workaround section.

Workaround:
To work around this issue:

1. Reconfigure replication and disable replication for the VM disks that are on VVOL and you want to move.
2. Reconfigure replication again and enable replication for the disks you excluded in step 1 as you select the new destination datastore. 

Note: The workaround requires entire disks data to be transferred to the destination datastore again