DR drill on SRM fails with the error: Failed to sync data on replica consistency group 'CG_NAME'. Internal error. Please contact the administrator.

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

• A VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) administrator initiates a "Planned Failover" or "Disaster Recovery" run.
• The task fails during the "Synchronizing Storage" phase.
• The following error is displayed in the SRM UI: Error - Failed to sync data on replica consistency group '[CG_NAME]'. Internal error. Please contact the administrator.

• Note: A "Test Recovery" may complete successfully on the same Recovery Plan even while the actual DR run fails.
• Re-trying the recovery plan fails with the same error.

 

Environment

VMware Site Recovery Manager 9.x

Cause

 The SRA passes a LocalizableAdapterFault event back to SRM because it is unable to synchronize the replica consistency group at the storage layer. This can be caused by:

• Replication state inconsistencies on the array.
• Manual synchronization or maintenance tasks actively running on the array.
• Communication failures between the SRA and the storage controllers.

The same can be verified by the vmware-dr.log which shows the below error messages for the recovery plan where SRM is receiving the LocalizableAdapterFault event from the SRA:

plan = 'dr.recovery.RecoveryPlan:#######-####-####-####-##########:########-####-####-####-############',
-->       planName = "Recovery_plan_name",
-->       planDescription = "",
-->       user = "######",
-->       startTime = "2026-05-22T16:06:00.342845Z",
-->       stopTime = "2026-05-22T16:06:02.09816Z",
-->       executionTimeInSeconds = 2,
-->       totalPausedTimeInSeconds = 0,
-->       resultState = "errors",
-->       warningCount = 0,
-->       errorCount = 2,
-->       poweredOnVms = 0,
-->       errorStateVms = 0,
-->       successfullyRecoveredVms = 0,
-->       ipCustomizedVms = 0,
-->       errorIpCustomizedVms = 1,
-->       poweredOffVms = 0,
-->       warnings = <unset>,
-->       errors = (vmodl.MethodFault) [
-->          (dr.storageProvider.fault.StorageDeviceGroupSyncFailed) {
-->             faultCause = (dr.storage.fault.LocalizableAdapterFault) {
-->                faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
-->                faultMessage = <unset>,
-->                code = "123-456-789.-1",
-->                arg = <unset>
-->                msg = "Internal error.
--> Please contact the administrator."
-->             },
-->             faultMessage = <unset>,
-->             deviceGroup = "Consistency_group_name"
-->             msg = ""
-->          },
-->          (dr.storageProvider.fault.StorageDeviceGroupSyncFailed) {
-->             faultCause = (dr.storage.fault.LocalizableAdapterFault) {
-->                faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
-->                faultMessage = <unset>,
-->                code = "123-456-789.-1",
-->                arg = <unset>
-->                msg = "Internal error.
--> Please contact the administrator."
-->             },
-->             faultMessage = <unset>,
-->             deviceGroup = "Consistency_group_name"
-->             msg = ""

Resolution

SRM acts as an orchestration layer; the actual data movement is managed by the storage array. To resolve this:

1. Inspect SRA Logs:
   • Access the SRM appliance via SSH.
   • Navigate to /opt/vmware/support/logs/srm/SRAs/.
   • Review the vendor-specific logs to find the internal storage error code returned during the syncOnce command.
2. Involve Storage Vendor:
   • If the consistency group shows errors or if the SRA logs indicate a persistent "Internal Error," contact your storage hardware vendor (e.g., Dell, HPE, IBM, Pure) to investigate the array-side synchronization failure.