Failed getting host recommendation from DRS to enter maintenance mode for cluster. There are no active hosts in the cluster

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

A general system error occurred: Failed getting host recommendation from DRS to enter maintenance mode for cluster 'ESXi Cluster'. Reason: 'There are no active hosts in the cluster.'

1. Apply solution tasks continuously fail in vCenter 

2. Apply solution tasks continue to show despite of turning OFF DRS & vSphere HA 

3. Apply solution task continues to arise despite of shutting down all the VMs on the host and putting it in maintenance mode & rebooting it.  

Environment

vSphere Replication 8.x
vSphere Replication 9.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 

Cause

Apply Solution task is initiated by vSphere Replication solution to install vmware-hbr-agent. vLCM will fail to work as expected because it can't put the host in maintenance mode. You must have more than 1 host in the cluster for vLCM to work.

Resolution

The instructions below is a workaround to stop the Apply Solution task because vLCM will not work with a single host. A permanent solution would be to add an additional host to the cluster. 

1. Check if the vmware-hbr-agent is installed. If not, install it manually. 

[root@ESXi:~] esxcli software vib list | grep hbr
vmware-hbr-agent               8.0.3-0.0.24143343                    VMware  VMwareCertified   2024-09-17    host
vmware-hbrsrv                  8.0.3-0.0.24022510                    VMware  VMwareCertified   2024-09-10    host

2. If the HBR agent is already installed, edit the hms configuration file in the appliance and update the hms-auto-install-hbragent-vib setting to false. 

root@VRMS [ /opt/vmware/hms/conf ]# vi hms-configuration.xml

<!-- Whether to install hbragent vib automatically when reconnecting to the hosts -->
<hms-auto-install-hbragent-vib>false</hms-auto-install-hbragent-vib>

3. Restart HMS service - systemctl restart hms