Site Recovery UI fails with error: "A Server error occurred".

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The vCenter Server reports the SRM UI Plugin as inaccessible:
  
  
  
  
• Launching the Site Recovery Manager from vCenter Server SRM plugin triggers error message: 
  
  
• Disaster Recovery operations (Test/Planned Migration) continue to work via other sites, indicating the underlying replication and pairing logic is intact but UI communication is failing.

Environment

VMware Live Recovery 9.x

Cause

The issue is caused by a communication failure between SRM appliances over TCP port 5480. In an ELM environment, the SRM UI plugin requires bidirectional connectivity on port 5480 across all SRM appliances ( Also vSphere Replication Appliances if in use) of the linked group to aggregate site information.

For reference, https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/386014/vsphere-replication-status-shows-as-inac.html

• Review of /var/log/vmware/dr-client/drplugin.log confirms connectivity timeouts:

####-##-## ##:##:##, 740 [dr-config-thread-78] WARN com.vmware.dr.plugin.utils.ConnectionUtils ########-####-####-####-############- Host unreachable java.net. UnknownHostException: #############.#####.######.###

####-##-## ##:##:##,900 [srm-reactive-thread-49] WARN  com.vmware.dr.plugin.utils.ConnectionUtils ########-####-####-####-############  - Problem occurred while checking connection to https://#############.#####.##.##:5480/configure java.net.SocketTimeoutException: Connect timed out

• The logs demonstrate that the Site Recovery client cannot reach the management interface (5480) of the paired SRM appliances, preventing the UI from populating paired site data.

Resolution

Ensure that TCP port 5480 is open and allowed bidirectionally between all VMware Live Recovery (SRM) appliances in the ELM environment. Port 5480 is crucial for communication between the Site Recovery Manager and the vSphere Replication appliance (If both Site Recovery manager and vSphere Replication server are in use). Verify that the required ports are open and that there are no firewall rules blocking communication.

For details on the required ports and services used by vSphere Replication, refer to the following VMware documentation: Services, Ports, and External Interfaces That the vSphere Replication Virtual Appliance Uses