Site Recovery Plugin Status "Not Accessible" in vSphere Environments

Products

• VMware Site Recovery Manager
• VMware Live Recovery
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Site Recovery Manager (SRM) or vSphere Replication (VR) plugin may display a "Not Accessible" status accompanied by a red exclamation point. Specific symptoms include:

• The Site Recovery landing page flags vCenter Server instances as "Not accessible," and service icons may appear greyed out.
• This behavior typically occurs after a vCenter Server upgrade (e.g., to version 8.0 Update 3).
• The issue affects both standalone vCenter Server deployments and those configured in Enhanced Linked Mode (ELM).
• The Site Recovery UI remains fully functional and accessible when using a direct URL (e.g., https:///dr).
• Replication operations, protection groups, and recovery plans continue to run without issue.

Environment

• VMware Site Recovery Manager
• VMware Live Site Recovery
• VMware vSphere Replication
• VMware vCenter Server

Cause

The issue is caused by stale, corrupted, or duplicate vSphere UI plugin packages cached within the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) filesystem. During a vCenter upgrade or patch, multiple build versions of the plugin directories (e.g., com.vmware.drui.plugin) may persist. This creates an initialization mismatch when the vsphere-ui service attempts to load extension metadata, blocking the rendering of the plugin in the client console.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, purge the vSphere UI plugin cache on the affected vCenter Server:

1. Log in to the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) via SSH as root.
2. Stop the vSphere UI service: service-control --stop vsphere-ui
3. Navigate to the serenity vc-packages folder and remove the cached Site Recovery (DR UI) packages: rm -rf /etc/vmware/vsphere-ui/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity/com.vmware.drui*
4. Navigate to the cm-service-packages folder and remove the cached vSphere Replication (VR UI) packages: rm -rf /etc/vmware/vsphere-ui/cm-service-packages/com.vmware.cis.vsphereclient.plugin/com.vmware.vrui*
5. Start the vSphere UI service: service-control --start vsphere-ui
6. Log out of the vSphere Client, clear your local browser cache, and log back in to verify the status.

Additional Information

If the Site Recovery plugin appears accessible (e.g., the status is "OK" or "Healthy") but you are still encountering functional errors—such as "Unknown error," site pairing failures, or configuration issues—the problem may be caused by stale or duplicate service registrations in the vCenter Lookup Service rather than a cache issue.

In these scenarios, please refer to KB 337576 (Cleaning up decommissioned SRM registration from vCenter Server) to identify and remove orphaned service IDs or stale extension entries that may be conflicting with your current environment.