SDDC Manager displays incorrect ESXi host version after manual update

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

• SDDC Manager displays an incorrect ESXi version for one or more hosts in the inventory.
• You verify the actual ESXi version on the host is correct, but SDDC Manager shows a different (usually older) version.
• The affected host may appear in a separate version group in the SDDC Manager UI, similar to:

  v Workload Domain
      v 5 ESXi Hosts                    8.0.3-24784735
          <esxi-host-01>
          <esxi-host-02>
          ...
      v 1 ESXi Host                     8.0.3-24585383
          <esxi-host-03>
  

• The host may also show a failed status in SDDC Manager when it is operating normally.

Additional symptoms reported:

• "SDDC is showing one host with the wrong version"
• "I've confirmed it's the same version as the others"

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.x and 5.x

Cause

SDDC Manager maintains its own inventory database of host versions. When an ESXi host is upgraded outside of the SDDC Manager lifecycle management workflow (out-of-band upgrade), the inventory database is not automatically updated. This causes the SDDC Manager UI to display the old version even though the host is running the new version.

Resolution

1. SSH to the SDDC Manager appliance.
2. Retrieve the host ID for the affected host:

   curl localhost/inventory/hosts | jq -r '.[]|{id,hostName}'
   

3. Locate the id value for the affected hostname in the output.
4. Update the inventory with the correct version, replacing <host-id> with the ID from step 3 and <version> with the actual ESXi version:

   curl -X PATCH 'localhost/inventory/entities/<host-id>' \
     -d '{"version":"<version>", "type":"ESXI"}' \
     -H 'Content-Type:application/json'
   

5. Refresh the SDDC Manager UI and verify the host displays the correct version.

If you also experience SSH connectivity issues to the host:

1. Update the known_hosts file with the host's current SSH keys:

   ssh-keyscan -t ecdsa-sha2-nistp256 -p 22 <esxi-host-fqdn> 2>/dev/null >> /etc/vmware/vcf/commonsvcs/known_hosts
   

   ssh-keyscan -t ssh-ed25519 -p 22 <esxi-host-fqdn> 2>/dev/null >> /etc/vmware/vcf/commonsvcs/known_hosts
   

2. Replace <esxi-host-fqdn> with the actual FQDN of the affected host.

Additional Information

• For an alternative method using the version-syncs API, see Synchronize inventory versions after out-of-band upgrade in a VMware Cloud Foundation environment.
• To avoid this issue, use SDDC Manager lifecycle management for ESXi host upgrades when possible.
•