Cisco HX CVM VMs are unable to be edited - Red DOT on VM CPU field

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

In Cisco hyperconverged environment.

In order to upgrade ESXi to 8.0, Cisco requires secure boot for the ESXi host hardware to be enabled (via Cisco's HyperFlex Connect). This allows for the Cisco HX CVM VMs to be upgraded, and the ESXi to be upgraded.

• The issue is experienced after enabling secure boot in the BIOS of the ESXi host hardware.
  
  

You may experience the following:

• From vCenter vSphere client, when accessing the VM edit window for the Cisco HX CVM VMs, the CPU section shows red exclamation mark, while all other VMs on the host do not.

• Any changes to the VM configuration are unable to be saved.
• The ESXi hostd.log shows below error regarding the configuration change attempt.
  
  Cannot edit PCI passthrough device while VM is powered on.

Cause

Response from Cisco engineer per customer:

• This is a known bug in Cisco SCVM VM build 5.0(2e).
  • The engineer had same issue in their lab, running the same build as in customer's environment.
• Cisco TAC has had a few support cases about this problem.
• There is no Cisco KB article about this at this time. 

Resolution

It seems to be fixed if the Cisco SCVM VM is upgraded beyond 5.0(2e).

• During the upgrade, a new SCVM is created, and the configuration from the old SCVM is copied to the new SCVM.