Unable to add the ESXI to a cluster on a brownfield SDDC Manager as it fails with "Cluster is marked as imported,This operation is not allowed on imported Clusters"

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

• Adding a Host adding a host into an existing workload/Management domain fails with the below error
  

  Error in SDDC Manager UI
  Error description: 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

  
  
  

Environment

 

• SDDC Manager 5.x

 

Cause

• VCF environment deployed in brownfield mode, where vCenter, NSX, and ESXi hosts were pre-existing and not provisioned by SDDC Manager. When you attempt to add a new ESXi host to the workload domain (e.g., via the SDDC Manager UI or API), the host does not appear in inventory, or the addition fails with errors such as:

  • "Host not found in vCenter inventory"

  • "Host is not compatible with the image"

  • "Host not managed by SDDC Manager"

Resolution

1. In brownfield deployments, SDDC Manager cannot discover or manage newly added ESXi hosts unless they are imported using the VCF Import Tool (vcf_brownfield.py).

2. Confirm the ESXi version compatibility with the target workload domain

3. Verify proper NTP configuration.

4. Add the Host to the required Cluster on vCenter manually

5. Run the Inventory sync with the SDDC Manager:

   1. SSH into the SDDC Manager as user vcf 

   2.  Run the vcf_brownfield.py script using the following command to sync the vCenter and SDDC Manager inventory

      To Download the vcf-brownfield-import toolset, Refer to VCF Import Tool Options and Parameters onto the SDDC Manager VM open the directory via an SSH session

      #cd /home/vcf/vcf-brownfield-import-x-y-z/vcf-brownfield-toolset
      #python3 vcf_brownfield.py sync --domain-name '<domain-name>' --local-admin-password '<password>'