Unable to add newly deployed vSAN witness node to vCenter.

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

While trying to add the witness node, getting below error on Add Host Wizard,

'Cannot contact the specific host, the host may not be available on the network.'

 

Able to ping ESXi from vCenter and vice versa.

Able to connect on port 443 and on 902 as well.

Environment

VCF 5.1

vCenter 8.0 U2a

vSAN Witness Appliance 8.0 U2

Cause

Below log entres we see in vCenter vpxd logs.

vpxd.log
2024-09-18T11:35:59.454Z info vpxd[05535] [Originator@6876 sub=IO.Http opID=m0xv7llv-110657-auto-2ddu-h5:70039840-86] Set user agent error; state: 3, SSL(<io_obj p:0x00007f43e42037d0, h:36, <TCP 'vcenterip : 46300'>, <TCP 'witnessesxiip : 443'>>), N7Vmacore4Http24MalformedHeaderExceptionE(Server closed connection after 0 response bytes read)
--> [context]zKq7AVECAQAAALnVYwEPdnB4ZAAAGdJTbGlidm1hY29yZS5zbwAAUhlDAIxBRADMWksAGa1IAFOwSADiHkkAuudDAA1VNwDlVjcA5ts3APk0OACT0FEBro4AbGlicHRocmVhZC5zby4wAAIv3g9saWJjLnNvLjYA[/context]
2024-09-18T11:35:59.455Z warning vpxd[06183] [Originator@6876 sub=vmomi.soapStub[3830] opID=m0xv7llv-110657-auto-2ddu-h5:70039840-86] Terminating invocation; <SSL(<io_obj p:0x00007f43e42037d0, h:36, <TCP 'vcenterip : 46300'>, <TCP 'witnessesxiip : 443'>>), /sdk>, moref: vmodl.infra.VmodlNs:infra-vmodl-ns, method: selectCapabilities
2024-09-18T11:35:59.455Z error vpxd[05535] [Originator@6876 sub=IO.Http opID=m0xv7llv-110657-auto-2ddu-h5:70039840-86] User agent failed to send request; SSL(<io_obj p:0x00007f43e42037d0, h:-1, <TCP 'vcenterip : 46300'>, <TCP 'witnessesxiip : 443'>>), N7Vmacore4Http24MalformedHeaderExceptionE(Server closed connection after 0 response bytes read)
--> [context]zKq7AVECAQAAALnVYwEPdnB4ZAAAGdJTbGlidm1hY29yZS5zbwAAUhlDAIxBRADMWksAGa1IAFOwSADiHkkAuudDAA1VNwDlVjcA5ts3APk0OACT0FEBro4AbGlicHRocmVhZC5zby4wAAIv3g9saWJjLnNvLjYA[/context]
2024-09-18T11:35:59.455Z info vpxd[06183] [Originator@6876 sub=IO.Http opID=m0xv7llv-110657-auto-2ddu-h5:70039840-86] Terminating user agent request; (null), N7Vmacore17CanceledExceptionE(Operation was canceled)

2024-09-18T11:35:59.463Z error vpxd[06183] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=m0xv7llv-110657-auto-2ddu-h5:70039840-86] [VpxLRO] -- ERROR lro-2152305 -- 520f4fca-ba73-fd9d-7fe7-26e3357c022d(52ea981f-181e-7157-986d-3c7c28a8effc) -- datacenter-3 -- vim.Datacenter.queryConnectionInfoViaSpec: :vim.fault.NoHost
--> Result:
--> (vim.fault.NoHost) {
-->    faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
-->    faultMessage = <unset>,
-->    name = "witnessesxiip"
-->    msg = ""
--> }
--> Args:
-->
--> Arg spec:
--> (vim.host.ConnectSpec) {
-->    hostName = "witnessesxiip",
-->    port = -1,
-->    sslThumbprint = "sslThumbprint",
-->    sslCertificate = <unset>,
-->    userName = "root",
-->    password = (not shown),
-->    vmFolder = <unset>,
-->    force = false,
-->    vimAccountName = <unset>,
-->    vimAccountPassword = <unset>,
-->    managementIp = <unset>,
-->    lockdownMode = <unset>,
-->    hostGateway = (vim.host.GatewaySpec) null
============================================================

 

 

Resolution

While checking the connectivity on specific MTU, the connection is failing.

We can run below command on ESXi and on vcenter to test connectivity with specific MTU (1500),

 

vCenter command,

ping esxip -s 1472

ESXi command,

vmkping -I vmk0 -d -s 1472 vcenterip

 

Fix the issue on network side for communication between Witness ESXi and vCenter for the defined MTU.