Recovered VMs in VMware Cloud Director get an APIPA address instead of the configured re-IP settings

Recovered VMs in VMware Cloud Director get an APIPA address instead of the configured re-IP settings

Machine-distilled from a resolved support ticket on 2026-09-28. Source ref: 89ac2c0f77c5. Verify before relying on it.

Applies to: Zerto VPGs recovering to VMware Cloud Director (vCD) targets; version not stated in the resolution.

Symptom: After a failover or failover test to a VMware Cloud Director (vCD) target, recovered Windows VMs come up without their configured static IP address. The VPG's re-IP settings look correct and the vApp/VM in vCD shows the expected IP, but vCenter reports a 169.254.x.x (APIPA) address and the guest network adapter has no configured IP. No re-IP or guest customisation logs (for example a VMware IMC folder under the Windows temp or VMware directories) exist inside the guest, even though VMware Tools is installed.

Cause: The 'vCD Guest Customization' option was not enabled in the VPG settings. When recovering to vCD, re-IP of recovered VMs relies on VMware Guest OS Customization. Without it, the computer name and network settings defined for the VM are never applied to the guest OS at power on, so the guest falls back to an APIPA address and no customisation logs are produced.

Resolution: 1. Edit the affected VPG in Zerto and enable the 'vCD Guest Customization' option. 2. Confirm the re-IP (static IP) settings for each VM/NIC are still correct. 3. Run a failover test and verify inside the guest that the configured IP is applied (guest customisation logs should now be generated). 4. Repeat for every VPG recovering to vCD that uses re-IP, and include a guest level IP check in routine failover tests, because the vCD view alone can show the correct IP even when the guest has not received it.