vSphere Replication recovery point objective violations

Products

• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
You may encounter recovery point objective (RPO) violations even if vSphere Replication is running successfully at the recovery site.

Cause

RPO violations might occur for one of the following reasons:

• Network connectivity problems between source ESXi hosts and vSphere Replication servers at the target site.
• As a result of changing the IP address, the vSphere Replication server has a different IP address.
• The vSphere Replication server cannot access the target virtual machine file system (VMFS) datastore.
• Slow bandwidth between the source ESXi hosts and the vSphere Replication servers.

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

• Search the /var/log/vmkernel.log at the source ESXi host for the vSphere Replication server IP address to see any network connectivity problems.
• Verify that the vSphere Replication server IP address is the same. If it is different, reconfigure all the replications so that the source ESXi hosts use the new IP address.
• Check /var/log/vmware/hbrsrv.log on the vSphere Replication appliance at the target site for problems with the server accessing a target VMFS datastore. You see entries similar to these entries, matching the RPO violation times on the affected virtual machines:
  
  963Z [EAF7DB90 error 'Main'] HbrError stack:
  963Z [EAF7DB90 error 'Main'] [0] Class: NFC Code: 3
  963Z [EAF7DB90 error 'Main'] [1] NFC error: The operation experienced a network error
  963Z [EAF7DB90 error 'Main'] [2] Can't write remote file /vmfs/volumes/4c77f9de-0ec8cf8b-b7df-001018588364/VM-replica/hbrcfg.GID-7d260648-27de-4c89-99c0-4e5af15f2ca5.226137.678326.vmx
  963Z [EAF7DB90 error 'Main'] [3] Failed to write to file (instanceKey=226137) (type=vmx) (identifier=VM.vmx)
  963Z [EAF7DB90 error 'Main'] [4] Converting error to wire failure
  743Z [F3DFCB90 warning 'Libs'] [NFC ERROR] NfcNetTcpWrite: bWritten: -1
  743Z [F3DFCB90 warning 'Libs'] [NFC ERROR] NfcSendMessage: send failed: NFC_NETWORK_ERROR
  743Z [F3DFCB90 warning 'Libs'] [NFC ERROR] NfcFssrvr_IO: failed to send io message
  743Z [F3DFCB90 verbose 'PropertyProvider'] RecordOp ASSIGN: lastGroupError, Hbr.Replica.Group.GID-a17cca01-5dc8-402f-bead-d14a3cba0f26

Additional Information

For more information, see the Troubleshooting vSphere Replication section on the VMware vSphere Documentation Center.