The “Check compliance with Image” runs in SDDC Manager but the update of the cluster does not start and is terminated with a “success”.

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

• Post starting the remediation process in SDDC Manager, the cluster remediation does not start and the hosts do not enter the maintenance mode.
  
  
• If we manually switch a host in the cluster to maintenance mode and perform an update on the individual host only, the update works fine.
  
  
• This issue is caused if Parallel Remediation option at the cluster level remediation setting is enabled.

Environment

SDDC Manager 5.2.1

Cause

This behavior may occur when the "parallelRemediationEnabled" setting is configured to true.

In such cases, the remediation task may report successful completion without any errors. However, hosts that are not already in maintenance mode will remain unremediated.

Resolution

To address this issue, you can choose one of the following approaches:

Option 1: Disable parallel remediation by setting parallelRemediationEnabled to false. 

Note: Disabling the "parallelRemediation" option within the remediation settings triggers a standard remediation workflow where hosts are automatically placed into maintenance mode and remediated sequentially. 

Global vLCM settings shall disable on all the clusters where as these settings can be overridden individually per cluster.

1) Steps to check Global Lifecycle manager settings for parallel remediation

To check the Global Lifecycle manager settings:

• Navigate to Lifecycle Manager UI using top-left ellipsis menu
• Select the "Settings".
• Under "Cluster Lifecycle" select "Images".
• Check the parallel remediation settings. 

This will be global settings applicable for all vLCM clusters.

Note : This setting can also be overridden on per cluster basis.

2) To disable global vLCM settings which are applicable on all clusters. Please validate the settings on the per cluster level:

• Navigate to cluster using Inventory view.
• Navigate to Updates tab.
• Select the Image section.
• Select the ellipsis besides "Check Compliance" button.
• Select the Edit Remediation Settings.
• Uncheck the parallel remediation settings.
• Change the number of tries from 1 to 3.

Option 2: Manually place hosts into maintenance mode before initiating remediation.

Post performing the above changes, the remediation was successful.

Additional Information

Improved messaging and notifications regarding this behavior have been implemented in VCF 9.0.