vRanger 5.x replications instantly fail with "cannot find {UUID} in the inventory of {hostname}" (4047394)

vRanger 5.x replications using the vRanger Virtual Appliance fail immediately with a "cannot find {UUID} in the inventory of {hostname}" error. All VMs are visible in inventory, yet none of the replications work, all receive this error and fail immediately. At the same time, backups from the failed VMs work without issue.

There has been a change in the VMWare infrastructure that has altered a UUID associated with the Virtual Appliance VM(s) themselves. This error is referring to the UUID (unique identifier) of the Virtual Appliance itself, not any of the VMs that replications are being attempted from. Changes that can cause this are (but not limited to):

1) Restructuring of the underlying storage/SAN storage/rebuild of datastore that the VAs reside on (or their scratch disks reside on). Even if the datastore names are kept the same when this is done, VMware will assign a new identifier to the underlying datastore, and vRanger does not "know" this datastore is the same, since it is referring back to an old (stale) UUID for that datastore.

2) Rebuilding/upgrading the host machines the VA machines reside on without first removing their credentials from vRanger's "My Inventory" page.

3) Rebuilding/upgrading a Virtual Center which has control over the hosts on which the VA VMs reside.

1) In vRanger, go to Tools--->Options---->VA Configuration.

2) REMOVE the existing VAs from the inventory.

3) RE-ADD the VAs with the proper credentials to the install. The replications should now work.

All VA machines do not necessarily have to be removed/re-added, but it is a "safe" way to ensure the UUID information stored for the VAs is correct in the vRanger database.