vCenter Server displays frequent "Check compliance of cluster with image" tasks due to vSphere Replication VIB installation failures

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

In the vSphere Client, you observe a high volume of repeated tasks titled "Check compliance of cluster with image" under the Monitor > Tasks view of a cluster. These tasks occur frequently (e.g., every 2 minutes) and are initiated by the vSphere Replication service (com.vmware.vr-sa...).

This behavior typically indicates that the vSphere Replication appliance is repeatedly attempting to verify or install the Host-Based Replication (HBR) VIB on the ESXi hosts within a cluster managed by vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), but the installation is failing.

Environment

 

• Product: VMware vCenter Server

• Component: VLSR

• Feature: vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM)

 

Cause

By default, the vSphere Replication appliance (HMS) is configured to retry the VIB deployment check every 120 seconds if a failure occurs. If the HBR VIB cannot be successfully installed on the hosts, the service continuously triggers compliance checks, leading to task exhaustion and verbosity in the vCenter task history.

Resolution

To reduce the frequency of these tasks while troubleshooting the underlying VIB installation failure, you can increase the retry interval on the VLSR appliance.

1. Log in to the VLSR via SSH as admin , then switch to root.

2. Stop the HMS service by running the following command:

   Bash

    

   systemctl stop hms 
   

3. Open the configuration file for editing:

   Bash

    

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

4. Locate the vib-deploy-retry-on-fail-sec parameter and change the value.  i.e. From default 120 seconds  to 3600 seconds (1 hour):

   <vib-deploy-retry-on-fail-sec>3600</vib-deploy-retry-on-fail-sec> 

5. Save the file and exit the editor.

6. Restart the HMS service:

   Bash

    

   systemctl restart hms 
   

Additional Information

Increasing this interval mitigates the task verbosity but does not fix the underlying reason the VIB is failing to install. Ensure you investigate the ESXi host logs (/var/run/log/esxupdate.log) for the root cause of the VIB deployment failure.