Unable to pair site with VMware Live Recovery (VLR) 9.0.4 and existing VLSR 9.0.2 in a Shared Recovery Site Configuration

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When attempting to deploy and configure a VLR 9.0.4 add-on appliance at a recovery site that already contains VLSR 9.0.2 and VR 9.0.2 appliances, a warning message is displayed.

• The warning indicates that proceeding will overwrite existing configuration data for the current VLSR 9.0.2 site pair.

• The main purpose of deploying the VLR 9.0.4 add-on appliance is to use this recovery site as a shared recovery. For example, as shown in the below snippet, a site pair needs to be set up between VLSR 9.0.2 and VLR 9.0.4 in VCF 9 environment
  

Environment

VMware Live Site Recovery 9.x

Cause

The issue is caused by a version mismatch and unsupported co-existence of different VMware Live Recovery appliance versions within the same site. Configuring a VLR 9.0.4 add-on appliance in an environment that still hosts active 9.0.2 VLSR appliances is not a supported configuration for shared recovery sites.

When configuring the VLR 9.0.4 add-on appliance, the configuration wizard explicitly triggers a warning when it detects existing 9.0.2 metadata. If the warning is ignored, the 9.0.4 configuration process attempts to claim the site resources, which would overwrite the 9.0.2 site pair database, leading to a loss of existing replication and protection groups.

Resolution

To successfully use the site as a shared recovery site for both environments, all appliances must be aligned to the same version.

1. Update all current VLSR and VR 9.0.2 appliances at all sites to version 9.0.4.

   • Follow the official documentation: Steps to Converge to VMware Live Recovery Appliance 9.0.4 and Common Issues During Convergence.

   • Ensure all prerequisites are met before starting the convergence/upgrade.

2. Once the environment is fully on version 9.0.4, deploy the VLR add-on appliance at the site intended to be used as shared recovery site.

3. During the configuration of the add-on appliance, use a Custom Extension ID. This prevents the overwrite warning and allows the shared recovery site to manage multiple protected sites independently.

4. Ensure the VLR appliance in the VCF 9 environment is configured with the same Custom Extension ID used in step 3.
   Configure the VMware Live Recovery Appliance on Multiple Protected Sites to Use with a Shared Recovery Site

5. Create a new site pair