NSX Host Showing Degraded Status despite all NICs and TEPs being up

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

You have:
- a newly-prepared NSX cluster
- ESXi version is 8.0
- DVS used for NSX has 4 uplinks
- only 2 physical NICs are available on the ESXi hosts

Host preparation for NSX is successful and the host and all it's NICs are up. However the ESXi host status in the NSX UI under System -> Fabric -> Hosts shows "Degraded" as in the screenshot below:

Environment

VMware NSX

Cause

This occurs because the pNICs on the DVS on this specific ESXi host are not attached to the same DVS Uplinks as the ones used in the uplink mapping used to prepare the ESXi host in NSX.

See the screenshot below, indicating which DVS uplinks (VDS uplinks) are in use in the NSX uplink mapping:

Resolution

Detach the pNICs on the ESXi host from the DVS uplinks they're connected to, and attach them to the ones used in the NSX uplink mapping. 

For example you may have the pnics vmnic0 and vmnic1 connected to Uplink 3 and Uplink 4 of the DVS but in the uplink mapping used in NSX, you're using Uplink 1 and Uplink 2. Detach the two pNICs from Uplink 3 and Uplink 4 and re-attach them to Uplink 1 and Uplink 2, in this example, to resolve the issue.