HAProxy Appliance Fails to Assign Static IP and Configure Networking on vSphere 8.0U3b

Products

• VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service
• VMware vDefend Firewall with Advanced Threat Prevention

Issue/Introduction

• Deploying the HA Proxy appliance built from vmware-haproxy results in a failure to receive an IP address upon power on.
  
  
• The HAProxy appliance deploys successfully but fails to configure its networking at boot.
  
  
• The DNS name displays "localhost" instead of the configured hostname.
  
  
• The appliance inherits an IPv6 or random DHCP IP address instead of the assigned static IP.
  
  
• The appliance remains inaccessible via SSH or the web console using the configured credentials.
  
  
• The vmware.log file for the haproxy vm located in /vmfs/volumes/<datastore_name>/<haproxy_vm_name>/vmware.log includes one or more of the following lines below:

<date><time> In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.metadata
<date><time> In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.userdata
<date><time> In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.vendordata
<date><time> In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.metadata.encoding 
<date><time> In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.userdata.encoding
<date><time> In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.vendordata.encoding

Environment

• VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service
  
  
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0 U3b and later

Cause

A change in the default behavior of cloud-init guestInfo variables in vSphere 8.0 U3b and later prevents the HAProxy appliance from accessing or applying these variables during the boot process. This blocks the appliance from configuring its networking, applying static IP addresses, or setting initial credentials.

Resolution

 

Apply the following configuration to the deployed HAProxy VM:

1. Power off the HAProxy VM.
   
   
2. In the vSphere Client, right-click the HAProxy VM and select Edit Settings.
   
   
3. Navigate to the VM Options tab and expand the Advanced section.
   
   
4. Click Edit Configuration and add the following key/value pair:
   
   guest_rpc.auth.cloud-init.set=FALSE
   
   
5. Save the changes.
   
   
6. Power on the appliance.

The appliance now successfully processes the configuration variables and assigns the configured static IP address.