NSX-ALB vCenter cloud issues with vCenter v7.0 and above

Products

• VMware

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
The vCenter cloud in NSX-ALB may go down during the resyncing process with the error "Resync failed with the vCenter" if the vCenter version is 7.0 or above.
Some additional symptoms include but are not limited to, failures in SE Lifecycle operations, adding/deleting interfaces from SE and VS placement process. 

Environment

VMware NSX Advanced Load Balancer 20.1.x

Cause

- The NSX ALB controller uses the VMware Infrastructure (vSphere) Java API to communicate with vCenter.
- As part of the resync process, the controller will request updates on the VMs in the configured DataCenter in batches.
- Starting v7.0, there are issues in the underlying Java API where it fails to deserialize the responses from vCenter.

Resolution

- Bug ID: AV-129536
- Details: vCenter cloud may go down with vcenter 7.0 and above
- Please upgrade to at least, v21.1.6 or v22.1.3, where we have discontinued the Java SDK. 

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
- When this issue is hit, the cloud may go down (Red in the UI) with the error: "Resync failed with the vCenter".
- If the cloud goes down, any changes that involve interaction with vCenter will fail.
- In case the cloud does not go down, the environment is still vulnerable to failures with SE creation and VS placement.
- The existing Service Engines and placed VSs will continue to work and will not be impacted, as long as there are no changes being made.