Unable to create a site pair in SRM - Failed to connect to lookup service at https://PSC_Address:443/lookupservice/sdk

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

In scenarios where the SRM and VR are redeployed on the recovery site after manually recovering the VM's, and the PROD site still using the existing SRM and VR appliances.

Below error is reported while trying to create a new site pair for PROD site SRM with the newly deployed SRM appliance on the recovery site

Unable to connect to lookup service at https://PSC_Address:443/lookupservice/sdk. Reason:https://PSC_Address:443/lookupservice/sdk invocation failed with 'java.net.ConnectException. Timeout connecting to https://PSC_Address:443'.

In the above figure,
- VCSA01 is the vCenter at PROD site
- VCSA02 is the vCenter at current Recovery site.
- VCSA03 refers to the earlier Recovery site configuration, which was completely rebuilt with a new vCenter, SRM, and VR appliances.

Additionally, attempting to break the old site pairing fails with an error indicating active replications are still running, which prevents configuring VM replication on the new site pair.

 

Environment

VMware Site Recovery Manager 8.x
VMware Live Site Recovery 9.x

 

Cause

The SRM and VR appliances on the PROD site contain old site pairing information from previously deployed appliances on the remote site, which have already been decommissioned. 

It is mandatory to redeploy SRM and VR when its partner Site appliances gets redeployed. Article for reference: Site Recovery Manager & vSphere Replication Redeployment Guidelines

 

Resolution

To resolve the issue, follow these steps:

• Un-register the SRM and VR appliances on the PROD site by navigating to the VAMI page : https://<IP/FQDN of SRM / VR appliance>:5480.
  Refer to this document : Unregister the VMware Live Site Recovery Appliance
• Re-register the appliances on the PROD site.
• If the SRM site pair fails with Error : "Failed to lookup the hostname" pointing to the remote site vCenter then add an entry in the /etc/hosts file of the SRM appliance to resolve the hostname.

Note: Un-registering SRM cleans the SRM database, meaning that all SRM configurations, including protection groups, recovery plans, and inventory mappings will be lost.