"Could not reestablish a connection to the host" error when cloning a Passive or Witness VM to a NFS3.1 datastore

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Cloning a Passive or Witness VM for a vCenter High Availability (VCHA) deployment to the same NFS 3.1 datastore as the source Active node VM fails with the error:

Could not reestablish a connection to the host

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.x

Cause

The cloning process involves acquiring various locks on the datastore. Cloning the source VM to the same destination NFS 3.1 datastore can result in conflicts that causes the cloning operation to fail.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, use NFS4 or clone the Passive and Witness VMs to a datastore different from the Active VM.