VxRail cluster not ready for vLCM enablement - vmware-hbr-agent VIB missing from the image

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Upon upgrading VxRail environment from vCenter 7 to 8, vSphere Lifecycle Manager will not enable due to the vmware-hbr-agent vib being missing from the image. The vLCM enablement wizard will not let you proceed beyond the validation stage.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.0

VMware vSphere Replication

Cause

In vSphere 8, vSphere Replication began managing its own installation. When enabled on a cluster, it will determine if the hosts have it's VIB installed and proceed with installing it if necessary. In VxRail environments, when upgrading to vSphere 8 and enabling vLCM, the wizard will detect that your hosts contain the vSphere Replication Agent VIB (vmware-hbr-agent). In an attempt to prevent you from removing important components, it will warn you to ensure the new image contains those VIBs or that they are removed before you enable vLCM.

Resolution

In the VxRail version of this wizard you will not be allowed to proceed with this process without fixing the issue. Because of the changes to vSphere Replication, you won't be able to install the agent VIB manually. You will need to remove the old VIB from the host so you can proceed with the enablement, and once that completes the new VIB can be automatically installed once it has been detected as missing.

To remove the VIB manually, login to the shell on each of your ESXi hosts and execute the following command:

esxcli software vib remove -n vmware-hbr-agent

Once this is removed from all the hosts on the cluster, you will be able to proceed with vLCM enablement.