"Independent disk was not found" error when creating a replication for large or multi-disk VMs in vCloud Availability

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Creating a replication for VMs with large disks fail in vCloud Availability.
• In the vCloud Availability Portal, you see a similar error:

Independent disk 'urn:vcloud:disk:########-####-####-####-########2c6a' was not found.

• In /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs/vcloud-container-debug.log on the vCloud Director Cell, you see messages similar to:

2019-11-28 13:47:36,833 | ERROR  | storage-fabric-activity-pool-7183 | CreateDiskActivity       | [Activity Execution] Failed to create disk ########-####-####-####-########4fcc in VC - Handle: urn:uuid:########-####-####-####-########d2a7, Current Phase: CreateDiskActivity$CreatePhase | requestId=########-####-####-####-########c9e7,request=POST https://vcloud/api/vdc/########-####-####-####-########1a14/disk,requestTime=1574948846293,remoteAddress=10.223.194.191:55746,userAgent=Apache-HttpClient/4.5.10 (Java/1.8.0_221),accept=application/*+xml;version 27.0 vcd=########-####-####-####-########ae1b,task=########-####-####-####-########2e29 activity=(com.vmware.vcloud.backendbase.management.system.TaskActivity,urn:uuid:########-####-####-####-########2e29) activity=(com.vmware.ssdc.backend.services.impl.CreateDiskActivity,urn:uuid:########-####-####-####-########d2a7) activity=(com.vmware.vcloud.fabric.storage.disk.impl.CreateDiskActivity,urn:uuid:########-####-####-####-########d2a7)com.vmware.ssdc.library.exceptions.VimFileTooLargeException: File "[datastore] C4-########-####-####-####-########889a (########-####-####-####-########d2a7)/C4-########-####-####-####-########889a (########-####-####-####-########d2a7).vmdk" is larger than the maximum size supported by datastore "datastore".
vCenter Server task (moref: task-6017345) failed in vCenter Server 'vcenterserver.eu.mds.lan' (########-####-####-####-########573c).

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vCloud Availability 3.5.x
VMware vCloud Availability 3.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the size of the placeholder independent disk is too large to create for any datastore in the storage policy. This can happen because the provisioned size of the independent disk is equal to the sum of all the disks of the VM being protected.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, select a storage policy for the replication of large/multi-disk VMs backed by datastores that are capable of handling large single files in the order of the placeholder independent disks being created.