Appliance VM for vSphere Replication uses 90+% CPU and various replication operations fail or are unreliable

Products

• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The appliance VM for vSphere Replication uses 90+% CPU
• Various replication operations fail or are unreliable
  

Environment

VMware vSphere Replication 5.5.x
VMware vSphere Replication 5.6.x
VMware vSphere Replication 5.8.x
VMware vSphere Replication 6.1.x
VMware vSphere Replication 5.1.x
VMware vSphere Replication 6.0.x
VMware vSphere Replication 6.5.x

Cause

This issue occurs because the default resources allocated to the appliance VM are sufficient for the typical deployment in a small environment. Large environments usually use array-based replication instead.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, increase the resources allocated to the appliance VM (VRMS) operations.

To increase the resources allocated to the appliance VM (VRMS) operations, increase the amount of memory that the process is allowed to use.

This may be sufficient to resolve the issue. If not, increase the VM resources.

To change the memory setting within the appliance:

1. Open the /etc/hbrsrv-init.config file using a text editor.
2. Change the MAX_MEM_SIZE setting from 640 to 1024.
3. After this change, reboot the appliance.

If the preceding steps does not fully resolve the issue, increase the resources for the appliance VM settings.

For example: Change the RAM to 4GB and the CPU to 8.