vSphere Replication HMS Service Fails to Start Due to Malformed hms-configuration.xml

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

The HMS service on the vSphere Replication (VR) appliance fails to start, rendering the VR appliance unusable and preventing site pairing or replication management. The issue persists even after reconfiguring the appliance and verifying certificates.

The hms.log shows the following critical error during service startup, indicating a failure to initialize the database persistence layer.

ERROR org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean [main] (..orm.jpa.AbstractEntityManagerFactoryBean) [] | Failed to initialize JPA EntityManagerFactory: [PersistenceUnit: hibernate] Unable to build Hibernate SessionFactory; nested exception is org.hibernate.MappingException: Could not get constructor for org.hibernate.persister.entity.SingleTableEntityPersister

Environment

VMware Live Recovery 9.0.x

Cause

The HMS service is crashing because the configuration file, /opt/vmware/hms/conf/hms-configuration.xml, is malformed.

 

This error is often a generic symptom of a preceding XML parsing issue. Inspection of the faulty production site's hms-configuration.xml file shows a missing closing bracket (>) for the final <config> tag:

XML

<sleep-after-setup-ping-test-group-millis>3000</sleep-after-setup-ping-test-group-millis></config

 

The incorrect XML syntax prevents the service from correctly loading its configuration and initializing the Hibernate SessionFactory, causing the HMS service to immediately fail.

Resolution

To resolve the issue, manually correct the syntax error in the hms-configuration.xml file on the affected vSphere Replication appliance:

 

 

• SSH into the vSphere Replication appliance having the issue (the Production Site appliance).

• Open the configuration file using a text editor (like vi):

  
  

  vi /opt/vmware/hms/conf/hms-configuration.xml

   

• Locate the end of the file where the configuration is closed.

• Correct the malformed closing tag by adding the missing angle bracket (>):

  Incorrect:

  XML
   

         <sleep-after-setup-ping-test-group-millis>3000</sleep-after-setup-ping-test-group-millis></config

• Correct:

  XML

   

   
  <sleep-after-setup-ping-test-group-millis>3000</sleep-after-setup-ping-test-group-millis></config>

 

• Save the file and exit the editor.

• Restart the HMS service:

  service hms restart