Configuring protection for a virtual machine in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager fails with the error: Permission to perform this operation was denied

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Configuring a protection group for a virtual machine in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) at the protected site fails
• You cannot create a protection group
• You see the error:
  
  Unable to create placeholder virtual machine at the recovery site: Permission to perform this operation was denied.
  
  
  

creating-protection-group-fails

Environment

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 4.1.x

Resolution

This issue can occur when the user using SRM is not the user that installed SRM.

To resolve this issue, ensure that the user using SRM is the same user that installed SRM. Verify that the user has administrator permissions granted in both vCenter Server and SRM for both the protected and recovery sites.

If the permissions are incorrect, follow these steps to establish connectivity for the correct user:

1. Restart the VirtualCenter Server service on both protected and recovery sites. For more information, Stopping, starting, or restarting vCenter services (1003895).
2. Restart the SRM service on both protected and recovery sites.
3. Connect to the vCenter Server on both sites as local administrator.
4. Ensure Administrator permissions are granted to the user who initially installed SRM (for example, srm_admin) on:
   • vCenter Server and SRM on the protected site
   • vCenter Server and SRM on the recovery site
     
     Note: For more information, see Managing Users, Groups, Roles, and Permissions in the vSphere Basic System Administration Guide.
     
     
5. Break the connection between the protected and recovery sites.
6. Pair sites using the user that installed SRM. For example, srm_admin.
7. Configure arrays from the primary site.
8. Configure mappings.
   

Note: For more information about SRM setup, see the VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager Administration Guide.