Configuration of Remote Replication in Flex fails with "Failed to create high availability replication link"

Problem

The initial configuration of Remote Replication between Flex appliance errors "Failed to create high availability replication link" , so not able to progress with the process of replicating a primary instance between two Flex clusters.

Error Message

Mar 10 2025 14:34:32 Failed to create high availability replication link.

Cause

When creating the network interface for the replication link, the combined length of the interface/bond name along with the VLAN number plus a suffix of ":0" exceeds the maximum label length of 15 characters which is permitted.

Error can be seen in the /var/VRTSvcs/log/IP_A.log log on the Flex node:

    2025/04/16 13:02:01 VCS INFO V-16-2-13716 Thread(139903975941888) Resource(vvrip_bo01_data-1066): Output of the completed operation (online)
    ==============================================
    Error: Attribute failed policy validation.
    bind: Cannot assign requested address
    bind: Cannot assign requested address
    ==============================================

The command being executed shows the label which is trying to be applied to the new virtual network interface.

2025/04/16 13:02:00 VCS DBG_2 IP:vvrip_bo01_data-1066:online:Plumbing Virtual IP using command : ip addr add XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/28 broadcast + noprefixroute label bo01_data.1066:0 dev bo01_data.1066

In this example, the bond is called "bo01_data", the VLAN id is 1066 and when combined with the suffix ":0" has a combined label length of 16 characters.

Solution

The solution is to ensure the combined length of the interface/bond name and the VLAN id is 13 characters or less (to allow for the 2 character suffix).

In the above example, the possible options to solve this would be:

• Shorten the bond prefix by at least 1 character, in which case VLAN ID's of 4 characters will work,
• Use VLAN ID's of 3 numbers or less for the replication network (with the same bond prefix),
• Don't use a vlan or a bond but a specific network interface.