VMware restore stuck on "preparing restore data" when restoring.

ISSUE

When attempting to restore a VMware backup, the job gets hung in the following state:

"Preparing restore data."

CAUSE

The restore size estimation mechanism has a defect resulting in a loop while attempting to read through a compressed backup archive.

This can be confirmed by reviewing the restore log for the following:

[root@VMware-UB ~]# egrep "hash failed|seek failure" /usr/bp/logs.dir/bpser*.log
/usr/bp/logs.dir/bpserver-restore-1.log:2025-03-06 13:45:20.376 -0500 : [LOG0] compression.c:2196: LZ4 block hash failed.
/usr/bp/logs.dir/bpserver-restore-1.log:2025-03-06 13:45:20.376 -0500 : [LOG0] aggregator.c:285: Prior seek failure is expected during size test

RESOLUTION

Disable the restore size estimation functionality by adding EstimateRestoreSize=False to [Configuration Options] in the master.ini by  running this command.

bputil -p "Configuration Options" EstimateRestoreSize False /usr/bp/bpinit/master.ini

• Once set, any active restore jobs stuck on this status will need to be cancelled and restarted.
• Replica functions may restart/retry if left alone but no direct cases to confirm behavior.