3 vCLS Virtual Machines may be created in vSphere cluster with 2 ESXi hosts, when vCenter version is prior to 7.0 U3 (18700403)

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

3 vCLS Virtual Machines are created in vSphere cluster with 2 ESXi hosts, where the number of vCLS Virtual Machines should be "2".

See: vSphere Cluster Services

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.1
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.2

Cause

In some cases (e.g. ESXi host disconnect/reconnect), vpxd may reserve an additional slot for vCLS Virtual Machine under race condition. This leads to 2 slots (2 vCLS Virtual Machines) for 1 host, which is expected to be 1 slot for 1 host.

Resolution

This issue has been resolved in vCenter 7.0 U3 (18700403).

Workaround:
To workaround the issue, please follow the below mentioned steps:

1. Putting a Cluster in Retreat mode

 

2. Restart vpxd service.

service-control --restart vmware-vpxd

3. Remove the Retreat Mode.

     * Putting a Cluster in Retreat mode

 To remove Retreat Mode from the cluster, change the value in step 7 to True.

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
No functional impact, except the unnecessarily deployed vCLS Virtual Machine consumes very small amount of CPU, memory, disk resource. DRS works as expected.

Other useful documentation vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) in vSphere 7.0 Update 1 and newer versions