VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager or VMware vSphere Replication failover fails with the error: Permission to perform this operation was denied

Products

• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• A disaster recovery plan failover in vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) or vSphere Replication fails.
  
• A test failover in SRM or vSphere Replication fails.
• You see the error:
  
  Permission to perform this operation was denied
  

Environment

VMware vSphere Replication 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1.x

Cause

This issue can occur if there are insufficient privileges for administration tasks on the recovery site.

The administrative privileges on the user account for SRM or vSphere Replication tasks must be equivalent to the privileges of the account used to install and configure replication. If the permissions differ, administration tasks such as failovers on the recovery site fail.

Resolution

To resolve this issue. perform one of these options:

• Create a new user with full administrative privileges in both the protected and recovery vCenter Server, then reinstall SRM or vSphere Replication using the newly configured user on both the protected and recovery sites.
  
  or
  
  
• Reset administrative privileges:

1. Restart the VMware VirtualCenter Server service on both the protected site and the recovery site. For more information, see Stopping, starting, or restarting vCenter services (1003895).
2. Restart the VMware SRM or vSphere Replication service on both sites.
3. Connect to both vCenter Servers and log in as the local administrator.
4. Ensure the installation user has sufficient administrative privileges in both the protected and the recovery site.
5. Break the connection between the two sites.
   
   Note: You must unconfigure Recovery plans and protection groups to break the connection between the sites.
   
   
6. Re-establish the site pairing while logged in as the installation user.

Additional Information

For more information, see:

• Site Recovery Manager 5.1 Installation and Configuration Guide
• Site Recovery Manager 5.1 Administration Guide
• Site Recovery Manager 5.0 Administration Guide

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