A Failback Operation for a Continuous Replication Pair Fails

A failback operation for a continuous replication pair might fail because of changes to the source VM after a failover operation.

Symptoms

A failback operation for a continuous replication pair might fail for any of the following reasons:

• The source VM was deleted after the failover operation.
• A disk was added to the source VM after the failover operation.
• A disk was deleted from the source VM after the failover operation.

Causes

Full sync operations are not supported for failback operations, so if the source VM is changed or deleted after a failover operation, the subsequent failback operation fails.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you can recover the source VM using one of the following methods.

Perform a Full VM Restore In-Place

If the source VM was deleted, you can recover the VM using a restore operation.

1. Perform a full VM restore using the In place option. For instructions in the Commvault documentation, see Restoring Full Virtual Machines for VMware.
2. After you perform a full, in-place VM restore, perform another failback operation. For instructions in the Commvault documentation, see Performing a Failback for a Continuous Replication Pair.

Create a New Replication Group

If the source VM was deleted or a disk was added to or removed from the source VM, create a new replication group. In this case, use the destination VM as the source VM, and the original (deleted) source cluster as the destination. The replication operation restores the source VM to the source ESX server with no data loss.

1. From the navigation pane, go to Disaster recovery > Replication Monitor.
2. On the Continuous tab, in the row for the original replication pair, click the action button, and then select Stop.
3. Using the replication wizard, create a new replication group and select the former destination VM as the Content and the former source cluster as the Target. For instructions, see Creating a Replication Group Using the Replication Wizard.
4. On the Replication Monitor page, for the new replication pair, perform a planned failover. As a result, the original source VM is restored. For instructions, see Performing a Planned Failover for a Continuous Replication Pair.
5. After the failover completes, on the Continuous tab, in the row for the new replication pair, click the action button, and then select Stop.
6. After the new replication pair stops, in the row for the new replication pair, click the action button, and then select Delete pair.
7. After the new replication pair is deleted, in the row for the original replication pair, click the action button, and then select Start.