Feature does not work or experiences longer downtime when upgrade NSX on ESXi 7.0 U2

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
While upgrading NSX on ESXi 7.0 U2 the following feature could be affected;

• Service insertion does not work.
• Port mirror goes long downtime. 
  • From uplink to a logical port.
  • From a vnic to another vnic on the same logical switch.

• In the /var/log/vmkernel.log file, you will see an error similar to:

  WARNING: NetDVS: DVSHandleClientWriteFailure:2767: Failed to write critical property com.vmware.nsx.vdl2.enabled on DVS da c2 88 43 db d0 45 94-85 bc a5 4f 1c fb c3 a5, return :Success.

Environment

VMware NSX-T Data Center
VMware NSX-T Data Center 3.x

Cause

This issue occurs during NSX upgrade on ESXi 70u2. During NSX upgrade to a higher NSX version, it will call vmkapi vmk_PortsetVDSPropUpgradeSet to enable all registered features (e.g. service insertion, port mirror, etc.) on the new upgrade version, but this vmkapi skip the feature, which will cause the unknown issue like features not working or partial working.

Resolution

This issue is fixed in ESXi 70U2 and fix is in subsequent releases.

Workaround:
To work around this issue, see VMwareDoc for NSX upgrade procedure Configure Host.

1. Select Maintenance mode when changing the host upgrade unit group upgrade mode.
2. Use an API call PUT https://<nsx-manager>/api/v1/upgrade/upgrade-unit-groups/<group-id>.
3. Enable the upgrade coordinator to restart the ESXi host(set rebootless_upgrade:false).