SDDC manager fails to boot on 4.5 after restoring it from file based backup in a brownfield environment, if user tries to reboot.

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

After upgrading to VCF 4.5, if file based SDDC manager backup and restore is performed, then later anytime if you try to reboot SDDC manager Virtual Machine, it fails to boot up. Error on Virtual Machine console show as below:

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.5

Cause

The format of the file /etc/fstab on SDDC manager is changed in 4.5. The restore operation replaces it with old format from backup file taken on older version of SDDC manager appliance. Due to incompatible format, SDDC manager fails to boot.

Resolution

Currently there is no resolution to the issue.

Workaround:

To work around the issue:

1. Login to SDDC manager console from vCenter web client.
2. Overwrite the fstab content with default fstab content on 4.5 as mentioned below:

#system mnt-pt type options dump fsck
UUID=########-####-####-####-########4dfa / ext4 defaults,barrier,noatime,noacl,data=ordered 1 1
PARTUUID=########-####-####-####-########6f33 /boot ext4 defaults 1 2
PARTUUID=########-####-####-####-########4449 /boot/efi vfat defaults 1 2
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom iso9660 ro,noauto 0 0
/dev/vg_swap/lv_swap1 none swap sw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/dev/vg_data/lv_data1 /data ext4
/dev/vg_data/lv_data2 /var/log/vmware ext4
/dev/vg_data/lv_data3 /opt/vmware/vcf ext4
/dev/vg_lcmmount/lv_lcmmount /nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount ext4
UUID=f774049c-32e0-####-####-####-########a49 /storage/alt_root ext4
UUID=fb5d3d68-15af-####-####-####-########cdb /storage/lvm_snapshot ext4
/nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/backup /home/backup/nfs/vmware/vcf/nfs-mount/backup none rw,bind 0 0

Note: If the file is set as read-only, run below command and then update the file and save.

mount -o remount,rw /

3. Reboot SDDC manager using "reboot" command.