Manual Installation of HBR Agent VIB on ESXi Hosts < 9.1.x to Allow HCX Migration of Encrypted VMs or Compatibility with HCX & vCenter version 9.1
Article ID: 404300
Updated On:
Products
Issue/Introduction
During an HCX Bulk migration workflow for an encrypted VM :
- When the source HCX Manager version is 4.11.x or higher and the source ESXi host version < 9.1.x (for example 8.0.3), regardless of source vCenter version
Or during an HCX Bulk or RAV migration workflow for any VM:
- When both the source vCenter version and HCX Manager versions are 9.1.x or higher, but the source ESXi host version is < 9.1.x (for example 8.0.3)
One of the following validation alerts will be seen if the Host Based Replication agent vSphere Installation Bundle (HBR agent VIB) is not installed on the source ESXi host:
"HBR-agent is not installed on source ESXi host for encrypted VM migration""HBR-agent is installed but not running on source ESXi host, running state is required for encrypted VM migration""HBR-agent is installed but not running on source ESXi host. For the migration, a running HBR-Agent is required. Please ensure the HBR-Agent is in the running state on the source ESXi Host."
You must manually install the HBR agent VIB on the source ESXi host.
HCX does not provide a way to install this VIB automatically to avoid a potential conflict with the installation of the same VIB on the hosts via vLCM operations.
Note that if the HBR agent VIB is manually installed on a host that is part of a vLCM-managed cluster, and the vLCM cluster image does not include the HBR Agent component, then vLCM will automatically remove the VIB during image remediation or compliance enforcement. To avoid this scenario, you can also import the HBR agent file into vLCM.
When checking the source ESXi host, the hbr-agent is not listed.
- Run the command to list the installed VIBs required:
esxcli software vib list | grep -i hbr - Only the
vmware-hbrsrvvib is returned and not thevmware-hbr-agent.- Expected result from an ESXi host with the
vmware-hbr-agentVIB installed:
- Expected result from an ESXi host with the
Note that this issue will not be seen if the Source ESXi host is running version 9.1.x or higher. On ESXi 9.1.x hosts and later installation of the vmware-hbr-agent VIB is not required since it is included by default within vmware-hbsrv.
Environment
VMware HCX 4.11
vCenter 9.1
Cause
The HBR agent VIB must be manually installed on the ESXi host in order to allow HCX bulk migration of an encrypted VM or Bulk and RAV Migration Compatibility with vCenter version 9.1.
Resolution
Open a Broadcom support case and refer to this knowledge article to get assistance with manually installing the HBR agent VIB.
For more information, see Creating and managing Broadcom support cases.
Additional Information
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