Performing a recovery test failover in VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager fails with the error: Failed to create snapshots of replica devices

Products

• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When performing a test failover using Netapp SRA 2.x with VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), you experience these symptoms:

• Recovery test failover operation fails.
  
  
• You see this or a similar message:
  
  Error - Failed to create snapshots of replica devices. Failed to create snapshot of replica device /vol/vol_prod. SRA command 'testFailoverStart' failed for device '/vol/vol_mtc_vmrg3_repl_ops'.Unable to export the NAS device Ensure that the correct export rules are specified in the ontap_config.txt file

Environment

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.5.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.8.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

This issue occurs when one or more possible NFS issues exist:

• Certain versions of the NetApp SRA may handle IPv6 addresses improperly.
  
  
• IPv6 is enabled on the storage array, but not on the VMware ESXi host, which can prevent communication between the host and the storage array, if volumes are exported only to IPv6 addresses.
  
  
• When the storage array is in 7-mode and IPv6 is enabled on the hosts in the cluster, the addresses presented to the array can exceed the limits allowed by the Data ONTAP 7-mode exports file.
  
  
• For use with ESXi hosts, NFS exports must enable read/write and root privileges.
  

Resolution

This is not a VMware issue. To resolve the issue contact your storage vendor.

The exported volumes must allow root access and read/write privileges. Additionally, If IPv6 is enabled but not in use on the VMware ESXi hosts and you exceed the limits set by the Data ONTAP 7-mode exports file, you can disable IPV6 on the ESXi hosts to reduce the number of addresses to which NFS volumes are exported. This will also work around any issue with your version of the NetApp SRA.

To work around this issue, assure NFS is properly configured and restrict the ESXi hosts to IPv4 on the NFS storage network:

1. Make sure that when configuring NFS that every volume or export is explicitly configured with r/w and root privileges. Check this by running the exportfs command on the command line of the NAS server on the Primary and the Recovery site. This will show the volumes and their configured privileges exported to the addresses of ESXi hosts on the Primary and Recovery sites. Correct the permissions of the exported volumes if necessary, and make a note of any IPv6 addresses in the output.
   
   
2. For each host in the Primary and Recovery sites, you must check to see if IPv6 is enabled and if so, disable it:
   
1. Log in to the ESXi host (primary and recovery sites) with an SSH client (putty command) and run the command:
   
   esxcli system module parameters list -m tcpip3
   
   You see output similar to:
   

   Name Type Value Description
   ------------------- ---- ----- --------------------------------
   ipportIscsiReserved int # of provisioned H/W iSCSI ports
   ipv6 int 0 Enable/Disable IPv6

   If IPv6 property is set to 1, then IPv6 property is enabled.

• Change the IPv6 property to 0 by running this command:
  
  esxcli system module parameters set -m tcpip3 -p ipv6=0
  
  
• Put the host in maintenance mode and reboot the server.
  
  

• Perform a Test recovery again after all hosts at both sites are rebooted.

Additional Information

For more information, see the NetApp Communities article, VMWare SRM 5.1 with NetApp SRA 2.0.1 over NFS - Error: Failed to create snapshots of replica devices; Unable to export the NAS device Ensure that the correct export rules are specified in the ontap_config.txt file.