Virtual machine fails to connect to portgroup or migrate to another host due to negative numports.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• A reconfigure task to connect VM's network to a vDS portgroup or NSX segment fails with the below message:

A general System error occurred: DVS error: See FaultCause Cannot Create dvportgroup-##### of <name_of_the_vDS> on the host <host_ip_address> ThrowableProxy.cause Cannot complete a vSphere Distributed Switch operation for one or more host members

• You might see opaque switches named "nsx.LogicalSwitch:<UUID>" listed in vSphere Client.
  
  • VMs connected to such opaque switches might have trouble in migrating to another host because the target host might have normal portgroups corresponding to the opaque switches.
    It might help to specify the correct port group as target network.
• In the vCenter vpxd.log, there may be below similar messages:

2023-04-07T07:44:53.359Z info vpxd[12556] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=vcd-########-####-####-####-############;activity=urn:uuid:########-####-####-####-############-dd-01] [VpxLRO] -- ERROR lro-76716000 -- vm-##### -- vim.VirtualMachine.reconfigure: vmodl.fault.SystemError:
....
-->                            value = "Received SOAP response fault from [<SSL(<io_obj p:0x00007fc6096ed5d8, h:214, <TCP '<ip_address> : 34562'>, <TCP '<ip_address> : 443'>>), /vpxa>]: applyDVPortgroup
--> Received SOAP response fault from [<<io_obj p:0x0000001362d62058, h:21, <TCP '127.0.0.1 : 52895'>, <TCP '127.0.0.1 : 8307'>>, /sdk>]: applyDVPortgroup
--> fault.DvsApplyOperationFault.summary"
....
-->                   (vim.fault.DvsApplyOperationFault.FaultOnObject) {
-->                      objectId = "dvportgroup-54804",
-->                      type = "vim.dvs.DistributedVirtualPortgroup",
-->                      fault = (vmodl.fault.InvalidArgument) {
-->                         faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
-->                         faultMessage = <unset>,
-->                         invalidProperty = "Vim.DistributedVirtualPortGroup.ConfigSpec.numPorts"
-->                         msg = "A specified parameter was not correct: Vim.DistributedVirtualPortGroup.ConfigSpec.numPorts"
-->                      }
-->                   }
-->                ]

• In the ESXi host hostd.log, there may be the below similar messages:

-->    (vim.dvs.HostDistributedVirtualSwitchManager.DVPortgroupConfigSpec) {
-->       operation = "add",
-->       key = "dvportgroup-#####",
-->       specification = (vim.dvs.DistributedVirtualPortgroup.ConfigSpec) {
-->          dynamicProperty = <unset>,
-->          configVersion = <unset>,
-->          name = "<portgroup_name>",
-->          numPorts = -2

-->       (vim.fault.DvsApplyOperationFault.FaultOnObject) {
-->          objectId = "dvportgroup-#####",
-->          type = "vim.dvs.DistributedVirtualPortgroup",
-->          fault = (vmodl.fault.InvalidArgument) {
-->             invalidProperty = "Vim.DistributedVirtualPortGroup.ConfigSpec.numPorts",
-->             msg = "",
-->          }
-->       },

• vDS out of sync error - "The vSphere Distributed Switch configuration on some hosts differed from that of the vCenter Server" may be reported by the hosts. In vCenter --> Networking --> vDS --> Summary --> Out of Sync error --> Show Details page will list the portgroups (instead of individual ports) as out of sync.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

Cause

The port number (num_port) for the portgroup / segments turns negative.

vCenter can't push portgroups to hosts and portgroups corresponding to NSX segments might not be created on some hosts.
It causes opaque switches named "nsx.LogicalSwitch:<UUID>" listed in vSphere Client and migration trouble.

Resolution

The issue has been fixed in vCenter Server 8.0 and 7.0 U3q.

The work around for this issue is to make database edits.  Please open a support case with Broadcom via your customer portal and reference this article 321978