Protecting vCenter Operations Manager (vCOPS) with SRM – Fixing CD Detach

So if you’ve read this KB Article, you’ll see that it states VCOPS IS NOT ACTUALY SUPPORTED WITH SRM. vCenter Operations Manager 5.0.x: Using Site Recovery Manager to Protect a vApp Deployment (2031891) – But hey, who are we to listen to things like KB Articles!

Alright, the truth of the matter is.. Yes, for multiple reasons (IP Pools, the way VMware released the vApp, etc) that technically vCOPS is not supported with SRM.   So now that you know what isn’t possible, let’s focus on fixing the challenge with not having to constantly “detach” your CD drive since you’re clearly ignoring this and continuing to SRM Protect your vCOPS environment :)

You’ll notice if you view the settings of the VMs in the vApp that the CD drive is shown as connecting to datastore ISO file “[]”.

I know what you’re thinking, “Well, I’ll just click Remove and be done with it!” A few things about that! If you choose to ‘”Remove” it, you’ll get this error, which is annoying at best!

So, the way you get around this, is in the following steps…

Power down your vApp Virtual Machine – I tend to use “Shutdown guest operating system” to let the system halt gracefully.   Then change the CD drive to “Client Device” click “Ok” and let it save those settings, and then return into it, and then select “Remove” following these steps, the CD drive will no longer exist in the Virtual Machine, you can power it back up and let it be protected by SRM without ever getting errors about the CD drive being connected to []

Now, sometimes… a risk of shutting down your vCOPS environment is that you’ll get some whacked out error of some kind.  I’ve been there, I’ve done that, and this tends to resolve it every time.

• Log in to the UI VM Console
• su admin
• vcops-admin repair –- ipaddress 192.168.0.x (IP address of the Analytics VM)
• It’ll run for a while and you’ll see a screen like this – And then you’re set!

At times you may need to perform this activity, or even go so far as to repair in the event of an SRM failover.  

Hopefully this helps you out, as it has helped me out in managing my vCOPS environment(s) :)