Embedded vCLS machines will not deploy in vSphere 8.0 Update 3
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Embedded vCLS machines will not deploy in vSphere 8.0 Update 3

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Article ID: 378133

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Updated On: 06-24-2025

Products

VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

  • After updating to/installing vSphere 8.0 Update 3 vCLS virtual machines do not deploy.
  • There are no tasks seen for vCLS deployments on the vSphere Web Client.
  • Retreat mode option will not deploy new vCLS VMs
  • The ESX Agent Manager log on vCenter does not show any errors (/var/log/vmware/eam/eam.log).
  • The vpxd.log on vCenter will have similar entries to:

    [Originator@6876 sub=MoCluster opID=PodCrxMgr-domain-c1#-19098] Dumping vCLS Pod Crx host infos; domain-c1#, [{[vim.HostSystem:host-1##,esx.example-domain.com]
    [Originator@6876 sub=MoCluster opID=PodCrxMgr-domain-c1#-19098] Completed request from LRO request queue; {VclsPodCrxReconfigure(reason: 'VM power-on timeout on host-1##'), p: 00007f7790199c50, attempt: 1}, e: (null)

  • On the infravisor.log (/var/run/log/infravisor.log) of the offending host you will see the following snippets:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ No(5) infravisor[3553587]: time="YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.292657Z" level=error msg="Failed to get resource from spec vcls.yaml: failed to decode pod from /etc/vmware/infravisor/manifests/vcls.yaml: ValidatePodCreate failed: [spec.nodeName: Invalid value: \"esx.\": a lowercase RFC 1123 subdomain must consist of lower case alphanumeric characters, '-' or '.', and must start and end with an alphanumeric character (e.g. 'example.com', regex used for validation is '[a-z0-9]([-a-z0-9]*[a-z0-9])?(\\.[a-z0-9]([-a-z0-9]*[a-z0-9])?)*')]"

  • When viewing the hosts (/etc/hosts) file on the offending ESXi you see:

# Do not modify this file directly, please use esxcli.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain localhost
::1             localhost.localdomain localhost
192.#.#.###   esx. esx.example-domain.com

  • Checking hostname using the command hostname in SSH of the ESXi gives an output as follows.

esx.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0U3

Cause

  • This issue is being caused by an unsupported hostname. 
  • In the example used in this KB we can see the unsupported entry in the hosts file of the ESXi: 192.#.#.### esx. esx
  • The offending part here is the "." after the first "esx" instance:
    esx.
  • Other entries that may cause the same issue
    • esx-
      esx.example.com.
      esx.example.com-
      "esx.example.com " (a space at the end can cause this)

Resolution

To rectify this issue the hostnames of any offending ESXi nodes must be updated.

1. Enable retreat mode on the cluster as per the KB: 316514

2. Put the ESXi host into maintenance mode.

3. SSH to the ESXi and run the following command:

esxcli system hostname set --host esx --domain example-domain.com

4. Verify the hosts file has changed:

cat /etc/hosts

# Do not modify this file directly, please use esxcli.
127.0.0.1       localhost.localdomain localhost
::1             localhost.localdomain localhost
192.#.#.###  esx esx.example-domain.com


5. Restart the agents on the ESXi:

services.sh restart

6. Take the ESXi host out of maintenance mode.

7. Enable system managed vCLS (revert change made in step 1):

Additional Information

vSphere 8.0 Update 3 uses vCLS 2.0 by default. 

NOTE: The hostname can also be changed via DCUI