HCX Bulk or RAV Migration failure with "Error Creating Group"

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

• The initial Bulk Migration or RAV (Replicated Assisted vMotion) was initiated with "Enable Seed Checkpoint", but the migration failed during base sync replication phase.
• The migration was re-initiated with using "existing seeds" option which resulted in "Error Creating Group".
• Cleaning up the migration entries from HCX Database does not help.
• Migration of an another VM's works which rules out HCX-IX issue.
• The app.log on the target HCX Manager located at /common/logs/admin/ shows following entries
  
  2024-06-22 03:12:37.661 UTC [ReplicationTransferService_SvcThread-42023, Ent: HybridityAdmin, , TxId: TxId: #######-####-####-####-######] ERROR c.v.h.s.r.jobs.SetupTarget- Job (#######-####-####-####-#######) failed with exception java.lang.RuntimeException: Error Creating Group

Environment

HCX

Cause

• The failure is at task "SETUP_TARGET for transfer". 

2024-06-22 03:09:20.950 UTC [ReplicationTransferService_SvcThread-1395, Ent: HybridityAdmin, , TxId: #######-####-####-####-######] INFO  c.v.h.s.r.j.ReplicationTransferJob- Job (#######-####-####-####-######) Replication transfer job performing work in state:SETUP_TARGET for transfer #######-####-####-####-######

• The previous migration during the base sync phase failed (due any network outage or space issue etc..), effects the integrity of the target delta disks to be re-used as seeds.
• The above error is due to incomplete or bad seed checkpoint delta disks on target datastore that was left over due to the initial failed migration.

Resolution

• Perform a migration job clean up and remove the seed checkpoint disks from target datastore.
  
  
• • Login to the HCX Manager UI https://hcx-fqdn-ip 
  • Go to the Migration Tab
  • Click on the Migration job and Force Cleanup

• • This deletes the delta disks replicated during the initiate attempt of migration.
  • Re-initiate the migration again with "Enable Seed Checkpoint"

Note: When the job is reinitiated post deletion of delta seed disks on the target, the base sync starts from beginning.