VM Recovery Fails with Error - Unable to Open VMDK Files

Symptom

The virtual machine recovery fails and the following error message is displayed in the logs:

Unable to open vmdk file (file name with .vmdk). VMware reported the following error: You do not have access rights to this file. For more information, see the restore debug log. If necessary contact Arcserve support.

The following messages are found in the restore debug logs:

• [VDDKLOG] CnxAuthdConnect: Returning false because SSL verification requested and target authd does not support SSL
• [VDDKLOG] CnxConnectAuthd: Returning false because CnxAuthdConnect failed
• [VDDKLOG] Cnx_Connect: Returning false because CnxConnectAuthd failed
• [VDDKLOG] Cnx_Connect: Error message: SSL required

Solution

The reason could be that the SSL authentication is disabled on the ESX host. To resolve this issue, use one of the following methods:

Using the vSphere Client

1. Log into the vCenter/ESX server.
2. Navigate to the ESX server settings:

Configuration, Advanced settings, Configuration, Defaults security

3. Enable the following option:

config.defaults.security.host.ruissl

Using the command line

1. Connect to the ESX host using SSH.
2. Open the following file:

/etc/vmware/config

3. Set the security.host.ruissl entry to TRUE.
4. Save the file and restart the management agents.