vCenter Extension error when deploying vSphere Replication?

I’ve seen this popping up fairly often now and was under the impression I wrote about it a while back, but can’t find it. So here you go. If during the deployment of an OVF, in this case vSphere Replication, you hit a vCenter extension error it is probably due to a field missing in the vCenter runtime section of the vCenter settings.

The error which is shown in the log is:

“The virtual machine ‘<vm name>’ has a required vService dependency ‘vCenter Extension Installation’ which is not bound to a provider.”

It will show up in the UI with “No provider available” and “This dependency is required”. You can simply solve this by doing the following:

• Open the vSphere Client
• Go to “Administration” and “vCenter Server Settings”
• Click “Runtime Settings”
• Ensure both “Managed IP Address” (typically missing) and “vCenter Server Name” are filled out.
  

Now the OVF should deploy correctly. Note that the “Managed IP Address” field is empty by default, so if you are deploying a new vCenter Server instance make sure to fill it out. This will help preventing from running into the vCenter extension error in the future when adding other services.