vSAN Build Recommendation Engine not able to generate baselines for host upgrade

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

• When a vSAN cluster uses vSphere Lifecycle Manager Baselines(previously called vSphere Update Manager, VUM) to patch and upgrade ESXi hosts, user may see below warnings reported for "vSAN Build Recommendation Engine Health":
  1. my.vmware.com login credentials are not set or expired. Baselines shall be generated in minutes after the login credential is validated.
  2. Required ISO file ESXi-xxx hasn't been uploaded to VUM server.
  3. VMware ISO download site is down.

• 
• Furthermore, click on the button of "LOGIN TO MY.VMWARE.COM" and login will NOT resolve the issue.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0 U3
• VMware vSAN
• VMware Update Manager
• VMware Lifecycle Manager

Cause

The root cause of the issue is due to changes being made to how VMware Software Binaries are downloaded, refer to this article for details. vSAN Build Recommendation Engine is therefore impacted and is no longer able to download VMware Software Binaries automatically.

Resolution

If user prefer to upgrade ESXi hosts for a vSAN cluster using baseline generated by "vSAN Build Recommendation Engine"

1. Download the missing ISO file from Broadcom Support Portal
2. Manually import ISO through Lifecycle Manager's UI interface.
3. Wait a few minutes until the upgrade baseline is generated by "vSAN Build Recommendation Engine"
4. Choose the baseline group and use it to upgrade ESXi hosts in the cluster

 

Alternatively, if user is running VC/ESXi 8.0U2 and onwards, transition from vSphere Lifecycle Manger Baselines(VUM) to vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images(vLCM) is recommended and ESXi host upgrade options will be provided through vLCM framework. (Note: Starting VC/ESXi 9.0, vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images(vLCM) is the only support solution for ESXi host upgrade.) Refer to below articles for details:

• Managing ESXi Host Lifecycle Operations With vCLM
• Tech Docs: Managing Host and Cluster Lifecycle

Additional Information

This will impact cluster that where initially deploy and update to ESXI 8.0 and use VMware Update Manager and not VMware Lifecycle Manager.