VM Errors "No Connection to VR Server: Not Responding" after decommission of vSphere Replication from the environment

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Not able to replicate the VM with 3rd party replication provider as error shows it is stuck with previous provider (vSphere Replication ).

Virtual Machines show the messages 

• No Connection to VR Server: Not Responding
• System has paused replication: Disk added to VM

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x

vSphere Replication 8.x

vSphere Replication 9.x

Cause

This issue occurs because the proper procedure was not followed for uninstalling vSphere Replication per doc : Uninstall vSphere Replication

Just deleting vSphere Replication appliance (without unregistering) will leave the configuration of the replicated VM unchanged, which caused the error messages shown in vSphere client.

Resolution

To resolve the issue, please follow the steps below to remove vSphere Replication related entries from the VM's configuration file properly:

1. Enable SSH on the host where the virtual machine is running.
   
   
   1. Using the VMware vSphere client, open the Configuration tab on the host.
   2. Click Properties in the Services section.
   3. Click SSH > Options.
   4. Click Start.
      
      
2. SSH to the host using an SSH client like Putty.
   
   
3. To get all the VMids, run the command:
   
   vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

   
4. Find the VMid of the VM with the configuration issue. Make a note of the VMid. For example, consider the VMid is 55.
   
   
5. To get the replication state of the Virtual Machine, run the command:
   
   vim-cmd hbrsvc/vmreplica.getState 55
   
   
6. To disable VMware replication on the virtual machine, run the command:
   
   vim-cmd hbrsvc/vmreplica.disable 55
   
   
7. To verify, run the getState command again:
   
   The output looks similar to:
   
   [root@VMhost:~] vim-cmd hbrsvc/vmreplica.getState 55
Retrieve VM running replication state:
(vim.fault.ReplicationVmFault) {
faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
reason = “notConfigured”,
state = <unset>,
instanceId = <unset>,
vm = ‘vim.VirtualMachine:55’,
msg = “Received SOAP response fault from [<cs p:1fwaf548, TCP:localhost:80>]: getGroupState
vSphere Replication operation error: Virtual machine is not configured for replication.”
}

Additional Information

When VM is configured for vSphere Replication, the replication related info was added to the VM's configuration file .i.e. the following entries
is an example of VM with one disk with replication encryption/compression enabled 

==

+scsi0:0.hbr_filter.rdid = "RDID-#####-####-#####"
+scsi0:0.hbr_filter.persistent = "hbr-persistent-state-RDID-#####-####-#####.psf"
+scsi0:0.filters = "hbr_filter"
+hbr_filter.configGen = "2"
+hbr_filter.gid = "GID-#####-####-#####"
+hbr_filter.destination = "127.0.0.1"
+hbr_filter.port = "32032"
+hbr_filter.rpo = "1440"
+hbr_filter.quiesce = "TRUE"
+hbr_filter.netCompression = "TRUE"
+hbr_filter.netEncryption = "TRUE"
+hbr_filter.netEncryption.destination = "#.#.#.#.#"
+hbr_filter.netEncryption.port = "32032"
+hbr_filter.netEncryption.thumbprint = "#######"
+hbr_filter.dataSetsReplication = "TRUE"

===

 

These hbr related entries will be removed from VM's configuration files when running the vmreplica.disable method in the resolution field above.