Azure – ASR failback fails because boot type UEFI

azurefailovervirtual-machines

Our on-premises environment is VMware running Windows Server virtual machines. We are using Azure Site Recovery (ASR) to replicate some of our VMs to Azure. I have been doing some failover/failback testing and I have run into an issue.

On one VM that has been in ASR for at least a couple years, I successfully failed over to Azure and failed back to on-prem.
On two other newer VMs (one is WS2016; the other is WS2019) that I added to ASR just recently in order to test failover/backback, failing over was successful, but failing back generates this error:

Reprotect and Failback is not supported for the virtual machine (myvirtmachine) because it has boot type UEFI.

For all 3 of the machines I tested (including the one that successfully failed back), VMware > Settings > VM Options > Boot Options are identical. (Including Firmware=EFI; Secure Boot=Disabled)

Is there somewhere that I can change the boot type so that these machines will fail back? Or, is there something I should do with the settings in VMware before I fail over so that the machine will fail back?

Best Answer

This Update Rollup says it should be supported, but there are prerequisites, make sure you are up to date. Also this doc shows a lot of things about prerequisites about Azure Site Recovery / VM replication supported.

Prerequisites

  • Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Provider (version 5.1.4800 or a later version)
  • Microsoft Azure Site Recovery Unified Setup (VMware to Azure) (version 9.26.xxxx.x or a later version)
  • Microsoft Azure Recovery Services Agent (version 2.0.8700.0 or a later version)

Improvements

  • Azure Site Recovery now supports test failover, failover & failback of VMware and Azure machines with UEFI layout
  • VMware machines with following operating systems are supported - Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012R2, Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, SLES12Sp4, RHEL8
  • All Azure machines that are Generation 2 are supported

Usually when a task fails, it shows Cause / Problem (like you posted on your question) and Solution (there are possible solution and link to a page).

This doc is a good one for limitations when you try a failback.

For more troubleshooting you should read this doc.

In case that it won't help, please consider to open a ticket to Microsoft, they can see what is happening behind the scene.

Related Topic