How to manage vSphere replication solution in vLCM cluster image manually
book
Article ID: 380129
calendar_today
Updated On:
Products
VMware vSphere ESXiVMware Cloud FoundationVMware Live Recovery
Issue/Introduction
The automatic installation of vSphere replication agent (vmware-hbr-agent) is disabled
On the vSphere Replication appliance configuration file /opt/vmware/hms/conf/hms-configuration.xml, the "hms-auto-install-hbragent-vib" parameter is set to false
Note: If this is set to false then all new hosts will require the HBR vib to be manually installed in order to participate in replication. Do not set this to false unless guided to do so by Global Support.
You are unable to add vmware-hbr-agent in the cluster image configuration
Environment
VMware vCenter Server 8.x
VMware vCenter Server 9.x
VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x
vSphere Replication 8.x
vSphere Replication 9.x
Resolution
Configure cluster Remediation Settings with Parallel remediation. This will prevent the VMware-HBR-Agent update while replicated VMs are running on ESXi host.
Please note - This action will will effectively wait of the host to go in maintenance mode for the hbr-agent to be upgraded. If immediate upgrade is required, the step can be skipped, but there is a risk that ongoing replication sessions might be interrupted.
Download /opt/vmware/hbr/vib/VMware-HBR-Agent-xxxxxxxx-depot.zip from vSphere Replication appliance via WinSCP
Please Note - The location of the zip file has changed to /opt/vmware/share/hbr/vib/VMware-HBR-Agent-xxxxxx-depot.zip from vSphere Replication 9.0.3
example:
Import VMware-HBR-Agent-xxxxxxxx-depot.zip in Lifecycle Manager
From the vCenter menu → Developer Center → API Explorer, Select Endpoint <vcenter_fqdn> and from the dropdown menu for Select API choose "esx", filter or select "settings/clusters/software/solutions/PUT"
Enter the required parameters:
cluster: domain-c<number>
Note: You only need to copy domain-c<number> part of the URL. For example: When you navigate to cluster in vSphere client, your URL will be similar to this: https://<fqdn-of-vCenter-server>/ui/app/cluster;nav=h/urn:vmomi:ClusterComputeResource:domain-c31:ce4a7b9f-768c-2222-3333-fe50bd6341c8/summary. You only need to copy domain-c31 to use in the steps below
solution: VMware-HBR-Agent
request_body: (see example attached file request_body.json)
Note: You only need to copy xxxxxxxx which is the vib version. As an example, for VMware-HBR-Agent-8.0.3-0.0.24143343-depot.zip, "xxxxxxxx"= "8.0.3-0.0.24143343". (see attached file request_body.json)