Cannot open the disk 'hbrimagedisk.RDID*.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. The system cannot find the file specified with no Point-in-time

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Unable to recover replicated vms using vSphere replication with similar error where Vm is not configured with point-in-time. 

File hbrimagedisk.RDID-a3324962-f45e-4d98-a2be-ba5012512f71.vmdk was not found
Failed to start the virtual machine.
Cannot open the disk 'hbrimagedisk.RDID-56d2d3af-a18c-4f63-89c6-bc621c94e114.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
The system cannot find the file specified
VMware ESX cannot find the virtual disk "hbrimagedisk.RDID-56d2d3af-a18c-4f63-89c6-bc621c94e114.vmdk". Verify the path is valid and try again.
Module Disk power on failed.
Cannot open the disk 'hbrimagedisk.RDID-a3324962-f45e-4d98-a2be-ba5012512f71.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
The system cannot find the file specified
VMware ESX cannot find the virtual disk "hbrimagedisk.RDID-a3324962-f45e-4d98-a2be-ba5012512f71.vmdk". Verify the path is valid and try again.

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If vm is configured with point-in-time then its expected to see that recovered vm will still be pointed to hbr disks which acts as snapshot disk, but here affected vm is not configured with point-in-time where during vm recovery task, its expected to see that recovery task should perform vm consolidation merging the last hbr disk to the base disk. 

Then recovered vm should be pointed to base disk and recovered vm vmx config file should also be updated/reconfigured pointing to replicated base disk instead of hbr disks. 

Environment

vSphere replication 8.x

Cause

Recovered replicated VMs vmx file still hold entry for hbr*.vmdk instead of replicated vm disks. 

Here post vm recovery task, its expected that during vm recovery the replicated vm perform consolidation task where hbr disk is merged back to based disks and then vm vmx config file gets updated/reconfigured pointing to replicated base disk. 

Here since the vm vmx file is not updated, the replicated vm is still pointed to hbr disk which does not exist in the Dr replicated VM folder/location. 

Resolution

Edit recovered vm and detach hbr disks.

edit vm again - add existing disk - browsing datastore for recovered/replicated vm and select original replicated vm disk

Then power on. 

Above task can be performed on GUI or CLi. 

On cli 

cd to vm location path 

confirm registered vmdk against vmx file 

grep -i vmdk *.vmx 

If vms is still pointed to hbr disk

then vi vm vmx file and update disk path pointing to replicated base disk. 

Then save file and quit. 

Once completed, reload vm on host to update vm configuration. 

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms |grep -i vm-name 

vim-cmd vmsvc/reload vm_id