VM power on fails with error 'hbr_filter missing required option: gid' in VMware Cloud Director

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• vApp templates in VCD(VMware Cloud Director) are replicated from Site-1 to Site-2 by VCDA(VMware Cloud Director Availability). Post replication, these templates are failed-over/migrated to Site-2.
• VM's deployed using these failed-over/migrated vApp templates fails to power on in  VCD or directly in vCenter. Power on task failure displays the following error in VCD:
  
  com.vmware.ssdc.util.LMException: hbr_filter missing required option: gid. at
  com.vmware.ssdc.util.LMException.wrap(LMExceptionjava:135)
  
  
  

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 10.6.x
VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.x
vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

In VCD, creating a template or deploying from a template is fundamentally a cloning process in vSphere. This issue is caused by a known limitation in vSphere cloning logic where Host-Based Replication (HBR) filters are not correctly removed from the virtual machine configuration (.vmx) file during clone operations. 

Resolution

This issue is resolved in ESX 9.0.1.0

To restore VM's functionality, follow the instructions provided below to remove or comment out the HBR filter entries from the affected VM configuration file as a workaround:

1. Power off the affected virtual machine.
2. Establish a SSH session to ESXi host that is hosting the virtual machine and navigate to the location of the virtual machine's .vmx file:
   
   /vmfs/volumes/virtual_machine_datastore/virtual_machine_folder/
   
   
3. Edit the .vmx file using a text editor:
   
   vi virtual_machine.vmx
   
   
4. Create a backup of the .vmx file. Open the .vmx file with a text editor and remove or comment out (using #) all lines containing hbr_filter. Examples include:
   
   hbr_filter.configGen = ""
   scsi0:0.filters = ""
   hbr_filter.rpo = ""
   hbr_filter.destination = ""
   hbr_filter.port = ""
   hbr_filter.gid = ""
   hbr_filter.protocol = ""
   hbr_filter.quiesce = ""
   hbr_filter.opp = ""
   hbr_filter.pause = ""
   scsi0:0.hbr_filter.rdid = ""
   scsi0:0.hbr_filter.persistent = ""
   
   
5. Save the changes and exit the text editor.
6. Reload the vmx following - Reloading a vmx file without removing the virtual machine from inventory
   
   
   
   
   

 

Additional Information

VM Not Able to Power-On After Replication Disabled in vCloud Director Availability .
Attempting to power on a restored virtual machine fails with the error: An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM .