Creating a distributed firewall section in Manager UI fails with: Error message: Invalid anchor id : FirewallSection/<uuid> (Error code: 96205)

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• NSX-T 4.0.x is in use
• Creating a firewall section in Manager UI (Security -> Distributed Firewall -> Add Section Above/Below) fails.
• UI shows the following error: Http failure response for https://<manager>/api/v1/firewall/sections?id=<uuid>&operation=insert_before: 400 Bad Request Error message: Invalid anchor id : FirewallSection/<uuid> (Error code: 96205) 
• nsxapi logs show the following

/var/log/proton/nsxapi.log
2023-01-11T05:07:11.295Z INFO http-nio-127.0.0.1-7440-exec-51 NsxBaseRestController 26044 SYSTEM [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-manager" level="INFO" subcomp="manager"] Error in API /nsxapi/api/v1/firewall/sections?id=<uuid>befe&operation=insert_before caused by exception com.vmware.nsx.management.security.base.exceptions.SecurityException: {"moduleName":"Distributed Services","errorCode":96205,"errorMessage":"Invalid anchor id : FirewallSection/<uuid>"}

Environment

VMware NSX-T Data Center
VMware NSX-T Data Center 4.x

Cause

A default section is used as an anchor while creating firewall sections in the Manager UI.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in NSX-T 4.1.0

Workaround:

There is no workaround for affected versions. As Manager API is deprecated, Policy API should be used.