Creation of Placeholder VMs fails with error: “Placeholder VM creation error: Unable to access file [url of placeholder datastore]”

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

On protecting VLR , creation of placeholder VM fails with error: “Placeholder VM creation error: Unable to access file [url of placeholder datastore]”.

 

Environment

VMware Live Recovery Manager 

Resolution

Check that the DR site hosts to which the placeholder datastore is presented can in fact access the placeholder datastore.

Check Mappings: ensure that the VMs to be protected have valid resource and folder mappings that allow protection to be configured.

 

Additional Information

Do not confuse the VR target datastore location with the VLR placeholder datastore location, or which feature creates the placeholder.

• Placeholders are ONLY the created when a VM is added/protected by an VLR Protection Group, these are stored in the placeholder datastore define in VLR Advance Settings
• vSphere Replication replicates VM data to a defined target datastore. There is NO placeholder VM associated/created with the vSphere Replication task.

When configuring a VM for Recovery in the vSphere Replication wizard, the final 2 steps ask if the user wishes to add the replicated VM to a VLR Protection Group/Recovery Plan.
Be aware, that it is only on the VLR Protection Group/Recovery Plan stage that the placeholder is created in the defined datastore.