vSphere Replication Status Shows as Disconnected

The status of the vSphere Replication appliance shows as Disconnected if you are running the Site Recovery Manager client plug-in on Windows XP SP2 x64.

Problem

The status of the vSphere Replication appliance shows as Disconnected in the Summary tab for a vSphere Replication site. Attempting to reconfigure the connection results in the error Lost connection to local VRMS server at server_address:8043. (The client could not send a complete request to the server 'server_address'. (The underlying connection was closed: An unexpected error occurred on a send.)).

Cause

This problem occurs because the Site Recovery Manager client plug-in and vSphere Client cannot negotiate cryptography when the Site Recovery Manager client plug-in runs on older versions of Windows. If you run the desktop version of vSphere Client and Site Recovery Manager client plug-in on Windows XP SP2 x64, you might encounter incompatibilities between server and client cryptography support. Site Recovery Manager does not support older Windows XP x64 service packs.

Windows XP SP3 x86 is not affected by this issue. Site Recovery Manager does not support older Windows XP x86 service packs.

Solution

Download and install the Microsoft Hotfix from Microsoft KB 948963 http://support.microsoft.com/kb/948963. This hotfix is not applied in any regular Windows updates so you must manually download and apply the fix.