VM powers off and does not power ON when configuring for replication.

Products

• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When you configure replication for VM, it powers off
• When attempting to power On, you see this error:
  
  UI= Failed to attach filter 'hbr_filter' to 'scsi0:X'
   
• In the VMX logs, you see entries similar to:
  
  2017-06-13T16:51:02.018Z| vmx| I125+ Power on failure messages: Failed to attach filter 'hbr_filter' to 'scsi0:0': Not found (195887107).
  2017-06-13T16:51:02.018Z| vmx| I125+ Unable to create virtual SCSI device for 'scsi0:0' (/vmfs/volumes/5876b8b5-########-####-##########c8/VM/VM-0_2.vmdk).
   
• In the vmkernel logs, you see entries similar to:
  
  2017-06-13T16:59:25.836Z cpu14:2022443)Hbr: 1237: Disk reads back unmapped blocks as zeroes (diskID=RDID-0c7e7cd8-####-####-####-##########0b)
  2017-06-13T16:59:25.837Z cpu14:2022443)WARNING: Hbr: 1085: Failed to get the netstack for vmknic vmk3: Not found
  2017-06-13T16:59:25.837Z cpu14:2022443)WARNING: Hbr: 4927: Failed to create transport to 10.27.32.101(groupID=GID-80fc9875-####-####-####-##########41): Not found
  2017-06-13T16:59:25.837Z cpu14:2022443)WARNING: Hbr: 7490: Failed to create NetWorker (groupID=GID-80fc9875-####-####-####-##########41): Not found
  2017-06-13T16:59:25.838Z cpu14:2022443)WARNING: Hbr: 282: Failed to allocate disk info (diskID=RDID-0c7e7cd8-####-####-####-##########0b): Not found
  2017-06-13T16:59:25.838Z cpu14:2022443)WARNING: VSCSIFilter: 194: Filter error attaching filter 'hbr_filter' to VSCSI_Handle 0x43057fc2ab80 (ID=0x262e): Not found
  2017-06-13T16:59:25.838Z cpu14:2022443)WARNING: VSCSI: vm 2022436: 3883: Attaching filter 'hbr_filter' on scsi0:0 failed: Not found (195887107)

Note: This log excerpt is an example. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

 

Environment

VMware vSphere Replication 6.5.x

Cause

• The VM is powered off since the hbr_filter could not be attached to the VM when the disk is being re-opened
• The hbr_filter attach failed since it did not have updated information regarding the deletion of a VMkernel port which is configured for replication
• The information is updated only when hostd is restarted or when a tag for vSphere Replication is added to a VMkernel port

Resolution

Issue is fixed in ESXi 7.0 or later where the updated information is passed to the hbr_filter when the VMkernel port is deleted.

Additional Information

Workaround:

Either:

1. Restart hostd

OR

2. Tag a VMkernel port for vSphere Replication traffic