Unable to Take Ownership of Protected Domain

This article applies to all product versions.

Problem

The “regular” failover or restore task fails and displays the error “Unable to become a Protected Domain owner due to remote activity. Verify that the old DR Virtual Appliance is not accessing the Protected Domain on the Object Store.”

Cause/Resolution

Failover task on a Protected Domain fails

The “regular” failover method should only be performed after a complete disaster has occurred on the primary site and the primary site is no longer functional. If the primary site is still up and running when failover is triggered, ownership transfer of the protected domain will be blocked and an error will be triggered. This is because a heartbeat signal continues to emanate from the primary site.

If the primary site is still operational, use the planned failover option to move the files to the recovery site gracefully. To test the operation and integrity of failover for the purpose of DR, use the test failover function.

“Regular” and “forced” post-failover options are available to control the state of the protected site and ownership of VMs and data after failover has been completed.

Restore task on a Protected Domain fails

Before attempting to restore a Protected Domain to a remote recovery site, ensure that the original DR Virtual Appliance (DRVA) at the primary site is inaccessible or powered off. The heartbeat signal from the primary site will be stopped and ownership of the Domain can then be transferred to the recovery site.

If the primary site DRVA is still running or can access the Protected Domain on the object store, the restore task will fail.