SRM Plug-in Missing or Failed with esxupdate exit status: 7

Products

• VMware Site Recovery Manager

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms

Users may experience the following symptoms in vCenter and ESXi environments:

• Continuous error messages in vCenter tasks for ESXi hosts: An error occurred during host configuration: /usr/sbin/esxupdate returned with exit status: 7.

• The SRM (Site Recovery Manager) client plug-in status shows as Failed.

• The Site Recovery option is missing from the vCenter main menu.

Environment

VMware ESXi 7.x

VMware ESXi 8.x

Site Recovery Manager 9.x

Cause

This issue occurs because vSphere Replication was configured using an incorrect IP address (e.g., an IP belonging to an ESXi host instead of the vSphere Replication appliance).

During the host configuration process, vCenter attempts to download the vmware-hbr-agent.vib from the replication server. Because the configured IP is incorrect, the download fails with a HTTP 404: Not Found error, leading to the esxupdate exit status 7 error and the subsequent failure of the SRM plug-in.

Verification can be performed by checking /var/run/log/esxupdate.log on the affected ESXi hosts, which will show the failed download attempt and the incorrect IP/URL being used:

2026-05-22T05: 39:39Z Er (11) esxupdate [610453068] : esximage. Errors. VibDownloadError: ('https : //10.#.#.#:443/vib/vmware-hbr-agent.vib', None, " ('https: //10.#.#.#:443/vib/vmware-hbr-agent.vib', '', 'HTTP Error 404: Not Found') ")

Resolution

To resolve this issue, re-configure the vSphere Replication connection using the correct Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) or correct IP of the VR server:

1. Verify correct IP: Identify the correct management IP address of the vSphere Replication (VR) appliance.
2. Verify port 443 connectivity from the ESXi host to the appliance as Port 443 is needed for ESXi host to download vmware-hbr-agent vib from vSphere Replication Appliance.
3. Re-configure Replication: Update the vSphere Replication registration in vCenter. It is highly recommended to use the FQDN of the VR server during this process to ensure consistent resolution.
4. Validate Plug-in Status:
   • After re-configuration, verify that the SRM/Site Recovery option appears in the vCenter main menu.
   • Confirm that the vSphere Replication status shows as OK.
   • Monitor vCenter tasks to ensure that host configuration tasks for the hbr-agent now complete successfully without the exit status 7 error.