SRM Testfailover on a vSphere Replication virtual machine fails at stage Power On with the error: “Error - The operation is not allowed in the current state“

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• A virtual machine on site B shows as invalid.
• In the /var/log/hostd.log file on the site B host where the virtual machine resides, you see entries similar to:
  
  --> File "/vmfs/volumes/544acb6f-fe275dfc-63b8-00215a9b015a/DALOPS2/vrTestImage-GID-a9e0fc58-957f-4a1f-94d8-e403982320e0/DALOPS2.vmx" line 105: Variable "snapshot.redoNotWithParent" is already defined.

  
• In the VirtualMachine.vmx file of the site B of the virtual machine, you can see the snapshot.redoNotWithParent entry is present twice.
  
• In the recovery plan history report, you entry similar to:

no host is compatible with the virtual machine

Cause

This issue occurs because the line containing snapshot.redoNotWithParent is duplicated in the destination VirtualMachine.vmx file of the virtual machine on site B.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in the SRM 5.8.0.1 Patch. For more information, see Site Recovery Manager 5.8.0.1 Express Patch Release (2096080).

To work around this issue in earlier versions of SRM, remove the snapshot.redoNotWithParent line from the VirtualMachine.vmx file while the virtual machine is powered off.

remove the snapshot.redoNotWithParent line:

1. Login to the ESX host to which the virtual machine is assigned via SSH. For more information, see Connecting to an ESX host using an SSH client (1019852).
2. Power off the virtual machine using the vSphere client.
3. Open the VirtualMachine.vmx file using a text editor to remove one of the lines with snapshot.redoNotWithParent.
4. Reload the virtual machine without removing it from inventory. For more information, see Reloading a vmx file without removing the virtual machine from inventory (1026043).
5. Power on the virtual machine.
   
   Note: Ensure that this issue no longer occurs by rerunning the test failover.

Additional Information

Connecting to an ESX host using an SSH client
Reloading a vmx file without removing the virtual machine from inventory
Site Recovery Manager 5.8.0.1 Express Patch Release