Deploy witness VM Appliance against vCenter 6.5P01/6.7P01/7.0 fails with Error "Duplicate element 'InstanceID'"

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The Administrator experiences the witness deployment in 6.5 P01,  6.7 P01 ( U1 ), & 7.0 or lower versions fails in Stretched or 2-node stretch clusters.
• Based on vCenter server and attempts made , the admin may see following error in GUI of VC or vpxd logs :
  • Error:
     - Line 497: Duplicate element 'InstanceID'.
     - Line 521: Duplicate element 'InstanceID'.
     - Line 548: Duplicate element 'InstanceID'.
     - Line 575: Duplicate element 'InstanceID'.

Environment

VMware vSAN 6.x

Resolution

•    For the 6.5 , the issue has been fixed in  Build 6.5 P05  ( Build 16576891  - Release date 2020-07-30 )
•    For the 6.7 , the issue has been fixed in  Build 6.7 P03  ( Build 16713306  - Release date 2020-08-20 ) 
•    For the 7.0 , the issue has been fixed in  Build 7.0 P01  ( Build 16324942  - Release date 2020-06-23 )

For above mentioned releases, There is vSAN specific vSAN Witnessovfvm (.ova) as deliverable.

• It is advisable to have the ESXi Build version and vSAN witness version in the vSAN cluster to be same unless otherwise specified. 
• The vCenter Server should have same update and with same or higher build number ( To match VC and ESXi , you may refer to release date of vCenter Server and corresponding ESXi Server )