vSphere Replication Shows Replication as “not active”

I was messing around in my SRM lab and ran into this issue. It is a common issue that we see, but it has different causes.

I set up replication for the VM, failed it over to the other site. I then removed replication cleaned up the protection group and recovery plan. After a little while I configured replication from the recovery site to the protected site. In the middle of configuring replication, my protected site host dropped out of vCenter. After getting everything on-line again I was able to configure replication on the VM. I went to check the replication status in the GUI and found it stuck in the “not active”.

The first thing I did was try to “synchronize now”, but this failed immediately telling me “An ongoing Synchronization task already exists”.

So I went to the ESXi host to take a look at the replication status on the VM. What I found was that there is a full sync in progress, but the progress was at 0%.

Replicate Virtual Machines Using Replication Seeds

You can make the initial replication of VDMK files more efficient by physically moving files onto a storage device. vSphere Replication uses the physically moved files as replication seeds.

You might need to use replication seeds if it is not practical to copy the files over the network because the amount of data is too large, the bandwidth available is too small, or some combination of the two.

When replicating virtual machines, ensure that virtual machines are replicated to subdirectories in datastores. Copied disks work if the transfer method preserves the identity information stored in the VMDK file.

Prerequisites

To replicate a virtual machine using vSphere Replication, you must establish the vSphere Replication infrastructure at both sites. The SRM Server instances at each site must be paired, and thevSphere Replication appliances must be paired. If a virtual machine is powered off, replication begins when the virtual machine is powered on.

Procedure

1	Use the vSphere Client to connect to a vCenter Server that can manage the virtual machines to  be physically moved.
2	Click Datastores.
3	In the left pane, browse to the datastore that contains the files for the virtual machine, select the datastore, and in the right pane, click Browse this datastore.
4	Select the folders for all virtual machines to be physically moved, right-click the selection,  and click Download.
5	Select a destination to which to copy the files and click OK.
6	Click Yes.
7	After the download finishes, transfer the files to a location on the paired site to upload them.
8	On the vSphere Client Home page at the paired site, click Datastores.
9	In the left pane, browse to the datastore to contain the files for the virtual machine,  select the datastore, and in the right pane, click Browse this datastore.
10	Select the folder to contain the copies of the virtual machines, right-click the selection,  and click Upload Folder.
11	Select the folder containing the virtual machines, and click OK. Fuente: VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 Documentation Center Jorge D.

Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication

Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Using Replication Seeds

vSphere Replication prevents you from resizing the virtual machine disk file during replication. If you used replication seeds for the target disk, you can resize the disk manually.

Procedure

1	Unconfigure replication on the virtual machine.
2	Resize the disk on the primary site.
3	Resize the target disk that is left over after you unconfigure replication.
4	Reconfigure replication on the virtual machine.

Resize Virtual Machine Disk Files During Replication Without Using Replication Seeds

vSphere Replication prevents you from resizing the virtual machine disk file during replication. If you did not use replication seeds during configuration of the target disk, vSphere Replication deletes the target disk when you stop the replication.

To resize a virtual machine disk if you did not initially use replication seeds, you must perform a test recovery, clone the recovered virtual machine, and reconfigure the disk manually using replication seeds.

Procedure

1	Run a test recovery for the virtual machine.
2	Clone the recovered virtual machine on the same datastore where the replication occurs after you reconfigure  the replication.
3	Revert the test recovery.
4	Unconfigure the replication.
5	Resize the disk on the primary site.
6	Resize the disk on the cloned virtual machine on the secondary site.
7	Unregister the cloned virtual machine on the secondary site, but do not delete the disks.
8	Enable replication by using the disks of the cloned virtual machine as seeds.

Fuente: VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5.1 Documentation Center
Jorge D.