Degraded vCLS VMs appear in the Health History of a vSphere Cluster though the Cluster Service Status shows Healthy

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

A "Degraded" warning entry shows under the Health History section after navigating to Cluster > Monitor > vSphere Cluster Services 


The object id example: vCLS-5eb1ede1-dc71-4609-b5d6-475fea072f7a belongs to a VCLS VM that is no longer in existence on the cluster and so is a historical entry.

Steps may have already been carried out to restore the cluster Health, such as those in the following articles:

• Putting a Cluster in Retreat Mode
• "vSphere DRS functionality was impacted due to unhealthy state vSphere Cluster Services", vCLS virtual machines are not getting deployed after VCSA upgrade to 7.0
  
  
  

Cause

The "Degraded" status in the vSphere Cluster Services' Health History can appear for several reasons. This status reflects past events and does not necessarily indicate a current issue. Common causes include:

• Manual intervention: A user has powered off or deleted vCLS VMs in a DRS-enabled cluster.

• Retreat Mode Activation: vCLS has been intentionally disabled on the cluster using Retreat Mode.

• Automated VM Recreation: The vCLS service has automatically recreated its VMs, which may temporarily reflect a degraded state in the history.

Resolution

The Health History section in vSphere Cluster Services (vCLS) displays historical status data. You may notice a "Degraded" status in that history view. This is expected behavior when vCLS VMs are shut down and removed from the cluster.

The purpose of retaining health history is to provide visibility into recurring issues. If a degradation pattern emerges and cannot be cleared manually, the historical data helps with troubleshooting and proactive monitoring.

As long as the current Cluster Service Status is marked as Healthy, the historical "Degraded" status can be safely ignored. It does not affect the functionality or performance of the vCenter Server.