Unable to reverse replication for the virtual machine. A recovered disk was not found for replicated disk with UUID.

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

After a planned migration completes, the REPROTECT operation fails because vSphere Replication replaces empty ddb.uuid values with randomly generated UUIDs that do not match the original VMDK UUIDs.

1. You can RUN a planned migration successfully 

2. REPROTECT fails with these errors 

Unable to reverse replication for the virtual machine 'Neptune'. A recovered disk was not found for replicated disk with UUID 6000####-####-####-####-aa32135e####.
 
ERROR
Operation Failed
Unable to reverse replication for the virtual machine 'testvm'. Cannot validate the UUID of the target disk.
Operation ID: 0908165b-1085-47ad-87b4-##########

Environment

VMware vSphere Replication 
VMware Live Site Recovery

Cause

VMware Live Site Reocvery (SRM) support is aware of this error and is actively investigating similar cases to determine the cause. This section will be updated once the cause is identified.

Resolution

If assistance is required, please submit a case with VMware Support.

This error can be fixed manually by checking the disk UUIDs between sites and updating those with incorrect UUIDs. 

Follow these steps to identify and resolve UUID inconsistencies between source and target disks, ensuring a successful REPROTECT operation.

1. Identify and Compare VMDK UUIDs

First, list the UUIDs for all descriptor files in the VM directory. This command filters out data disks (`-flat.vmdk`) and change-block tracking files (`-ctk.vmdk`) to show only the metadata headers.

COMMAND: ls *.vmdk | awk '!/-flat/ && !/-ctk/' | xargs grep "ddb.uuid"

TIP: Compare the output of this command on both the **Source** and **Target** hosts to identify which disk has the incorrect UUID.

2. Update the VMDK UUID

Once the mismatch is identified, manually update the UUID in the descriptor file using `sed`.

CAUTION: Before running the update, it is best practice to copy the descriptor file: `cp VMDiskName.vmdk VMDiskName.vmdk.bak`

COMMAND: sed -i 's/ddb.uuid = ".*/ddb.uuid = "00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00"/' VMDiskName.vmdk

Instructions: 

VMDiskName.vmdk: Replace this with the specific descriptor file name identified with a mismatch.

ddb.uuid: Replace the dummy value with the correct UUID from the original VMDK.

3. Verification and Finalization

Re-run the identification command from Step 1 to confirm the changes have been applied correctly.

4. If the UUIDs now match across your environment, the REPROTECT operation should proceed without errors.

Additional Information

Upload the following logs to the case for analysis. 

1. vCenter support bundles from the source and target site
2. vSphere Replication support bundles from the source and target site
3. ESXi support bundles from all the hosts connected to the datastore/s where the source VM resides 
4. ESXi support bundles from all the hosts connected to the datastore/s where the target VM resides.