Enabling vSphere HA on a image based cluster fails with error, "A General system error occurred: Installing HA Components failed on the cluster".

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• VCSA environment with no internet access
• Environments that do not whitelist the Broadcom URLs
• An air-gapped environment, where hosts are no longer managed by single image and are patched through CLI. Post upgrade, vSphere HA fails to reconfigure while trying to connect to depot and pull the required VIB and VC cannot connect to public depot or repository in order to push the VIB to hosts.
• Error message displayed in the vSphere client: 
  • "A general system error occurred: installing HA components failed on the cluster domain-cxxxx"
  • "Cannot complete the configuration of the vSphere HA agent on the host. Applying HA VIBs on the cluster encountered a failure". 
  • "Failed installing HA component on the host host-xxxx. An error occurred while downloading depot metadata from http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repositoty/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-vmw_metadata-1_index_.xml."
• /var/log/vmware/vmware-updatemgr/vum-server/vmware-vum-server.log:

vmware.esximage.Errors.DepotConnectError: ([MetadataDownloadError(\'http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-vmware_metadata-l_index__.xml\', \'\', \'\', \'[Errno 104] Connection reset by peer\')"], "Unable to connect to depot(s) [\'http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-vmware_metadata-l_index__.xml,http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-DEL_metadata-43_index__.xml\'].", "Could not download from depot at http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-vmware_metadata-l_index__.xml, skipping ((\'http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-vmware_metadata-l_index__.xml\', \'\', \'\', \'[Errno 104] Connection reset by peer\'))", "Could not download from depot at http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-DEL_metadata-43_index__.xml, skipping ((\'http://vcenter_fqdn:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/_micro-depot_vendor-DEL_metadata-43_index__.xml\', \'\', \'\', \'[Errno 104] Connection reset by peer\'))")

Environment

VMware vCenter Server

Cause

While you can upgrade and patch hosts in image based cluster with a single remediation operation. vSphere Lifecycle Manager images define the precise image to be applied to the hosts after remediation. No deviation from the defined image is possible after remediation. vSphere Lifecycle Manager  does not allow solutions to push VIBs to the hosts. 

Resolution

Need to revert a cluster from a VCLM Image back to baselines in order to resolve the issue. 

To achieve this, we need to perform changes at VCDB level and it is always advised to perform any changes at the vCenter database level along with support assistance.

So, please log a case with Broadcom support for further assistance.

Additional Information

Comparison Between vSphere Lifecycle Manager Images and Baselines

Revert a cluster from a VCLM Image back to baselines