Remove 3rd party Distributed Switch in vCenter Server and HostProfile before Upgrading to 6.7 and later

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article describes how to avoid the network configuration mismatch before and after ESXi upgrade if there are HostProfiles attached to ESXi.


Symptoms:
You see below symptoms if 3rd party DVS (N1K) configuration exists in HostProfile which are attached to ESXi 6.5 or earlier version and reboot stateless ESXi or re-install non-stateless ESXi to load 6.7 or later version image for upgrade purpose:
 

• Proxy switches named M-N1K_NETWORK_NAME is created by HostProfile
• 3rd party DVS is missing in Host-Configure-Networking-Virtual switches.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Cause

This issue occurs as 3rd party DVS is not supported in vSphere 6.7 and later version.

Resolution

To resolve the issue, remove all N1K related configuration in HostProfiles before the upgrade. 

1. Migrate 3rd party DVS network to VMware DVS, including physical NIC, VM, vmknic, etc.
2. Remove 3rd party DVS in vCenter Inventory.
3. Remove 3rd party DVS related configurations in HostProfiles.
4. Perform pre-upgrade steps and proceed with upgrade.