“Cannot determine whether NSX-T Data Center is enabled on this cluster. Go to NSX-T Data Center system and enable bidirectional trust.“ Error when trying to upgrade ESXi host on vclm enabled cluster.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server 8.0
• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to upgrade an ESXi host from version 7 to 8 using a fail with the following error message:
"Cannot determine whether NSX-T Data Center is enabled on this cluster. Go to NSX-T Data Center system and enable bidirectional trust."

This issue occurs due to the NSX-T trust setting not being enabled on the associated vCenter cluster.

Environment

vCenter Version: 8.0 and above

ESXi Host Version: Upgrade from 7.x to 8.x

VMware NSX

Upgrade Method: Import Image using JSON script at cluster level.

Cause

The upgrade operation via the JSON script fails because NSX-T bidirectional trust is not enabled between NSX Manager and vCenter. When trust is disabled, vCenter is unable to validate the NSX-T configuration, blocking the upgrade operation initiated through the script.

Resolution

Log in to NSX Manager.

Navigate to System → Fabric → Compute Managers.

Locate the registered vCenter server.

Under the Enable Trust setting, switch the value from No to Yes to establish bidirectional trust.

Reattempt the upgrade using the same JSON script via the Import Image option.

After enabling trust, the upgrade process should initiate and proceed as expected.