When you configure protection on multiple virtual machines, the configuration fails with a placeholder creation error.

Problem

Configuring protection on a large number of virtual machines at the same time fails with either a placeholder creation timeout error or a placeholder creation naming error:

  • Placeholder VM creation error:Operation timed out:300 seconds
  • Placeholder VM creation error:The name 'placeholder_name' already exists

This problem occurs when you configure protection in different ways:

  • You create a protection group that contains a datastore or datastores that contain a large number of virtual machines.
  • You use the Protection Groups > Virtual Machines > Restore All option in the VMware Live Site Recovery interface on a large number of virtual machines.
  • You use the VMware Live Site Recovery API to protect a large number of virtual machines manually.

Cause

The infrastructure on the recovery site is unable to handle the volume of concurrent creations of placeholder virtual machines.

Solution

Increase the replication.placeholderVmCreationTimeout setting from the default of 300 seconds. See Change Replication Settings.

You do not need to restart VMware Live Site Recovery Server after changing this setting. VMware Live Site Recovery applies the setting the next time that you configure protection on a virtual machine.