Patching ESXi host via SDDC fails at precheck and upgrade due to MM on hosts with Zerto VM

Products

• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

Running precheck/upgrade on environments with Zerto VMs fail at entering Maintenance Mode

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation 4.x
• VMware Cloud Foundation 5.x

Resolution

To workaround the precheck, disable the dry run precheck.

1. Take a snapshot of the SDDC manager VM.
2. SSH to SDDC Manager using vcf and elevate to root with su.
3. Edit the application-prod.properties file
   
   vi /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-app/conf/application-prod.properties


4. Add the following lines to the end of the file
   

   lcm.nsxt.suppress.dry.run.emm.check=true
   lcm.esx.suppress.dry.run.emm.check.failures=true

5. Save and exit the file
   
   :wq!
   
   
6. Restart the LCM service 
   
   systemctl restart lcm

For the upgrade, power off the Zerto VMs. 

1. Follow the Zerto article below to power off the site. (Validate with Zerto support before executing the steps in the article below.)
   • How to Prepare to Power Off a Site with Zerto Virtual Replication Installed
2. Once the nodes are down, proceed with the upgrade and power them back on once done.