Unable to Add or Decommission ESXi Hosts in VCF Brownfield Imported Clusters via SDDC Manager

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

Adding or decommissioning a host in an existing workload or management domain fails or is restricted in the SDDC Manager UI.

Symptoms and errors encountered:

1. Decommissioning ESXi Host:
   • Error in SDDC Manager UI
     "Cluster is marked as imported. This operation is not allowed on imported clusters Remediation: This operation should be performed through vCenter for clusters imported in SDDC Manager."
     
   • The Decommission task can also fail with Error- REMOVE_HOST operation validation failed: Entity: <Cluster_Name> with failed check: Cluster not imported (Severity: CRITICAL)
     
2. Commissioning a New ESXi Host to the existing workload or management domain
   • The "Next" option is greyed out/unavailable on the host selection screen, and the resource summary displays: "Selected resources: 0 Cores, 0 GB Memory, 0 GB Storage."
     

 

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 5.x

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.x

Cause

Standard host lifecycle management operations (adding or decommissioning hosts) are restricted within the SDDC Manager UI for clusters integrated via the Brownfield Import process and marked as "Imported" in the database.

To maintain database integrity, SDDC Manager cannot automatically discover or manage added or removed ESXi hosts in these environments unless the inventory is updated manually via the VCF Import Tool (`vcf_brownfield.py`).

The /var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/domainmanager.log will contain the following the traces.

YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00.000+0000 INFO [vcf_dm, ####################, ####] [c.v.vcf.assessment.sdk. LambdaService, dm-exec-8] Successfully evaluated lambda task 1b1958fc-####-###-8a32-########
YYYY-MM-DDT00:00:00.000+0000 DEBUG [vcf_dm, ####################, ####] [c.v.v.a.s.AssessmentLambdaServiceClient, dm-exec-8] Filtered check results are [class LambdaCheckResultRest {

entityName: Shrd.Wld.SPOC-PRD-MGT-01
entityType: cluster
description: Checks whether the cluster has been imported in order to allow/deny cluster operation
resultMessage: Cluster is marked as imported. This operation is not allowed on imported clusters
severity: CRITICAL
status: VALIDATION FAILED
remediation: This operation should be performed through vCenter for clusters imported in SDDC Manager
name: Cluster not imported

}]

Resolution

To Resolve this issue in Brownfield Deployment follow through the below steps.

1. Log in to the vSphere Client for the associated vCenter Server.

2. Manually execute the required host operation:

   • To add a host:

     • Manually add the ESXi host to the target cluster. Ensure the newly added host configuration (NTP, VMK, networking, NSX, and storage) matches the existing cluster members.Inconsistent storage configurations may cause issues documented in KB SDDC Manager UI failed to load Workload Domains with an error: "Failed to load all domains information".

   • To decommission a host:

     • Right-click the target ESXi host and select "Remove from Inventory".

3. SSH into the SDDC Manager appliance using the `vcf` user account and elevate privileges to `root`.

4. Download the VCF Import Toolset (`vcf-brownfield-import-<version>.tar.gz`) per Broadcom documentation and extract the archive onto the SDDC Manager VM.

   •  Refer to VCF Import Tool Options and Parameters onto the SDDC Manager VM open the directory via an SSH session

5. Navigate to the directory containing the VCF Import Toolset script (`vcf_brownfield.py`).

   • cd /home/vcf/vcf-brownfield-import-x-y-z/vcf-brownfield-toolset

6. Run the inventory synchronization script to reconcile the SDDC Manager database with the current vCenter state:

   • python3 vcf_brownfield.py sync --domain-name '<domain-name>' --local-admin-password '<password>'

     Note: Replace `<domain-name>` with the exact name of the target Workload Domain, and `<password>` with the `admin@local` user password for the SDDC Manager

7. Verify the script completes with a "SUCCESS" status.

8. Refresh the SDDC Manager UI. The host modifications will now be correctly reflected in the managed inventory.