Adding an ESXi host to a workload cluster fails in SDDC API Explorer with the following message: "Addition of hosts into not active vcenter <vcenter name> is not allowed."

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

Adding a host to a workload domain cluster, and any other task (i.e. password remediate, certificate replacement, etc) via SDDC Manager will fail.

Environment

VCF SDDC Manager 4.x
VCF SDDC Manager 5.x

Cause

Investigating the status of the vCenter Server in the SDDC Platform DB, it is in an error state.

• Take an SSH session to the SDDC Manager VM as the vcf user, then switch to the root user with the command su -
  • Open the postgres database:
    • SDDC 5.x: /usr/pgsql/13/bin/psql -U postgres -h localhost
    • SDDC 4.x: psql -U postgres -h localhost
  • Connect to the platform database:
    • \c platform
  • Run the following command to check the status of the vCenter Server
    • select id, vm_hostname. status from vcenter;

id	vm_hostname	status
<vcenter ID>	<vcenter name>	ERROR

Find the vCenter Server and check the status.  In the example above, the vCenter Server's status is set as ERROR.  This is why the tasks in the SDDC Manager UI involving this vCenter Server are failing.

Resolution

Open a case with Broadcom Support to investigate the health of the vCenter Server at issue, and resolving the status issue at the SDDC Manager database level.

Additional Information

Using the VCF Diagnostic Tool for SDDC Manager

Using the VCF Diagnostic Tool for vSphere (VDT)