While working on a demo of VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) I kept getting the following error when I would try to test my recovery plan.
[error]
Recovered datastore ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible to host ‘<Host Name>’. Recovered VMFS volume ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible or not mounted on host ‘<Host Name>’.
Recovered datastore ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible to host ‘<Host Name>’. Recovered VMFS volume ‘snap-########-<LUN NAME>’ is not visible or not mounted on host ‘<Host Name>’.
Failed to update embedded paths in virtual machine file ‘/vmfs/volumes/<Datastore Identifier>/<Virtual Disk Name>.vmdk’. A general system error occurred: No such device
AND
Recovered datastore ‘snap-########-<Name>’ is not visible to host ‘<Host Name>’. Recovered VMFS volume ‘snap-########-<Name>’ is not visible or not mounted on host ‘<Host Name>’.
[/error]
I was using the EMC RecoverPoint SRA in this instance.
Having seen something similar to this before I figured that I must be rescanning too soon. So I probably needed to rescan twice which was typical for versions of SRM prior to 5.1. In fact you can find several different links that talk about how to do this. Here are a couple I found while troubleshooting and looking for the correct way to do this in SRM 5.1
- Duncan Eppings Yellow Bricks blog post – SRM FAQ! – http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2009/08/11/srm-faq/
- Tech Target – Five Common VMware SRM Error Messages & How to Resolve Them – http://searchdisasterrecovery.techtarget.com/tip/Five-common-VMware-SRM-error-messages-and-how-to-resolve-them
The links above deal with older versions of SRM and you can’t find the settings mentioned in 5.1 or newer versions of SRM. So whats the answer? Well I went right to the source. Its listed in the SRM 5.1 release notes. You don’t add an additional rescan anymore. All you do is set a delay.
Here is the snipit from the release notes:
[important]
SRAs can send responses to SRM before a promoted storage device on the recovery site has become available to the ESXi hosts. When SRM receives a response from an SRA, it performs a rescan of the storage devices. If the storage devices are not fully available yet, ESXi Server does not detect them and SRM does not find the replicated devices when it performs rescans. Datastores are not created and recovered virtual machines cannot be found.
Workaround: If you experience problems with unavailable datastores, SRM 5.1.1 provides a new setting to allow you to delay the start of rescans after an SRA promotes a storage device.
- Right-click an SRM site and select Advanced Settings.
- Click storageProvider.
- Set the
storageProvider.hostRescanDelaySecparameter to delay the start of storage rescans by a number of seconds. A value from 20 to 180 is reasonable. - Restart the SRM service.
NOTE: In previous releases, you might have used the storageProvider.hostRescanRepeatCnt parameter to introduce a delay in recoveries. Use the new storageProvider.hostRescanDelaySec parameter instead.
http://www.vmware.com/support/srm/srm-releasenotes-5-1-1.html
[/important]
For the environment I was working on I added a 60 second delay and that was plenty. After doing that the tests came back with no errors.
I hope this helps you as you test your SRM environment. Remember with SRM test early and test often!
