Error: Offline depot content already exists during VMware Live Recovery registration or bundle import

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

After registering a VMware Live Recovery (VLR) appliance to vCenter Server, the VLR appliance needs to push its hbr-agent vib to the ESXi hosts. This task can fail with the following error:

A general system error occurred: Offline depot content already exists with ID '####'

Because this task leverages Lifecycle Manager, the vmware-vum-server.log may also show:
Offline depot content already exists in the DB with ID : ###########################

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server 7.x / 8.x
• VMware Live Recovery 9.x
• vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM)

Cause

Stale metadata from a previous attempt or a database conflict in the VMware Update Manager (VUM) database blocks the registration of the content depot.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, delete the conflicting depot via the Data Center CLI (dcli).

1. Take a snapshot of the vCenter Server Appliance (and all vCenters in the same SSO domain).
2. Log in to the vCenter Server via SSH as root.
3. List the conflicting offline depots to identify the ID mentioned in the error:
   dcli com vmware esx settings depots offline list
4. Delete the conflicting depot using the identified ID:
   dcli com vmware esx settings depots offline delete --depot [ID] --force true
5. Restart the Update Manager service:
   service-control --restart vmware-updatemgr
6. Re-attempt VLR configuration.

 

Additional Information

If the issue persists, a full reset of the Update Manager database may be required. Refer to KB 316581.