NSX port files are missing after NVDS to VDS migration, and NSX ports are missing and vNICs are not connected after ESXi reboot.

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• You have migrated NVDS to VDS without migrating VMs to other ESXi.
  Instead you powered off the VMs.
• NSX-T version was prior to 3.2.2.
• hostd logs the messages below every 5 minutes.
  <Timestamp> warning hostd[*******] [Originator@6876 sub=Hostsvc.NetworkProvider] Skip saving dvport [VDS Name] to [Datastore Name] [VM name]/.dvsData/<DVS UUID>/<Port UUID>: file not accessible
  • "file not accessible" is important.
• If you reboot ESXis without migrating the VMs, the VMs can not connect to NSX segments after reboot.
  A failure is logged in vmware.log when the VMs are powered on after the ESXi is rebooted.
  <Timestamp> In(05) vmx - Fail to connect dvport for 'ethernet[N]'.
  <Timestamp> In(05) vcpu-0 - VMXNET3 user: failed to connect Ethernet[N] to network <Logical switch UUID>.
  <Timestamp> In(05) vcpu-0 - [msg.device.startdisconnected] Virtual device 'Ethernet[N]' will start disconnected.

Environment

VMware NSX-T prior to 3.2.2

Cause

It is a known issue that NSX port files are not created if NVDS is migrated to VDS without migrating VMs to other ESXi.
The port files should be created in /vmfs/<Datastore>/<VM directory>/.dvsData/<DVS UUID>/<Port UUID>.
However NSX fails to create the files on NVDS to VDS migration if VMs are on the ESXi.

Without the port files, ESXi can not restore the NSX ports after reboot and VMs can not connect to the NSX ports.

Resolution

The issue is not seen if NVDS is migrated to VDS with NSX-T 3.2.2 and later.

If you can not upgrade NSX-T before the migration:

• To prevent the issue of missing port files, migrate VMs to other ESXi when migrating NVDS to VDS.
• If you have already migrated NVDS to VDS without migrating VMs, follow one of the workaround to restore NSX port files.
  • Migrate the VMs to other ESXi.
  • Connect the vNICs to another portgroup and connect them back to the original NSX segments.