It’s been a while since i’ve done a vSphere specific Quick Fix post, but the great thing about tinkering and labbing is that you run into situations and corner cases that are not that well documented. This was the case while I was working on my upcoming VeeamON demo leveraging the new CDP capabilities in Veeam Backup & Replication v12 (currently in private beta). For more information that specifically, remember to check back in a few weeks, but for this post I managed to fix an error that popped up while trying configure the VAIO Filter against a bunch of source VMs that where to be replicated across to a cloud location.

The Error:

During initial replica config there is some integration between the VAIO platform and the vCenter to work out what Storage Policies are where on each host in the cluster or clusters. This is all tied to Storage Policy Based Management (SPBM) which is a framework that the I/O filters are applied to VMs through. In order to apply an I/O Filter to a VMDK or a VM, a VM Storage Policy will first need to be created. In order to create one, you must have the appropriate permissions.

For those who are familiar with Storage Policy Based Management and the creation of a VM Storage Policy, the creation of a policy with an I/O Filter is slightly different. When an I/O Filter is installed, typically the I/O Filter will include an example for a policy, very similar to how this is done for VMware vSAN and VVols. This policy typically will contain a pre-selected “common rule” which is where the data services are described. These “common rules” are defined through Storage Policy Components. By default, various Storage Policy Components are pre-created from vSphere’s built-in filters, and more are added as I/O Filters are installed.

During the initial config process a background error occurred as shown below

VM configuration for the initial sync completed with errors Error: Unable to create a storage policy: one or more storage providers are offline. Check the storage provider state using vSphere Client (vCenter > Configure > Storage Providers) and follow the VMware recommendations for offline storage…

When looking at the status as suggested above the problem was clear

There is a VeeamKB that links to a VMwareKB to run a script to attempt to reset the certificate status of the Storage Provider for the impacted host in the cluster, and there is also some information around trying to fix things with the ESXi CLI for 6.7 versions of vCenter and ESXi. With all that said, there is a very easy way to get that Status back Online

The Fix:

Because you are unable to Synchronise or Rescan the Offline Storage Provider, I first tried to restart the service specifically, followed by all services via the ESXi CLI. When that didn’t work I did reboot… which didn’t work…but to save everyone some time, the quickest path to resolution that I found was to Disconnect the ESXi Host from vCenter, remove it from Inventory and then Connect it back up. This probably worked in the same way as the script provided in the VMwareKB above in that it reset all the permissions and certificates to trust the host to the vCenter resulting in the Storage Provider to come back Online in the Status as shown below.

With that fixed, the CDP policy was able to complete the initial replication and we are on our way with VAIO…