"Failed to get controller list" when 'get controllers' is executed and NSX Transport node status is in 'unknown/Down' state.
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"Failed to get controller list" when 'get controllers' is executed and NSX Transport node status is in 'unknown/Down' state.

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Article ID: 407365

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Updated On:

Products

VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

  • NSX Transport node status is in Unknown/down state

  • Ping test from affected ESXi host to all NSX managers completes
  • From the NSX UI, under Fabric --> Hosts --> (affected host), click on "view details" which shows Controller connectivity "Unknown"
  • Command 'nsxcli -c get controllers' on affected ESXi host shows the error: "Failed to get controller list"

  • From logs we can see that there is a timeout connecting to nestdb:

WARNING: NestdbClient: failed to get stub to tcp://127.0.0.1:2480, retrying in 5000ms in var/run/log/nsx-syslog.log in the ESXi host:

2025-10-14T22:26:13.589Z Wa(180) nsx-opsagent[2945781]: NSX 2945781 - [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-esx" subcomp="opsagent" s2comp="nestdb-client" tid="2946826" level="WARNING"] NestDbClient: failed to get stub to tcp://127.0.0.1:2480, retrying in 5000 ms...

WARN: DaemonHealthMonitor: NestDB echo timeout (60sec)

WARN: DaemonHealthMonitor: ping nestdb failed

  • Checking the status of nsx-nestdb service on the affected ESXi host shows the service is not in a running state:

[root@esxi-host:~] /etc/init.d/nsx-nestdb status
NSX-NESTDB is not running

Environment

VMware NSX

Cause

  • The nsx-nestdb service is not in a running state causing the controller connectivity to be in a down state. The status of the transport node reports controller connectivity to be "Unknown" in the NSX UI.
  • The ESXi transport node fails to get the controller list as the nsx-nestdb service is not available. 

Resolution

It is recommended to keep the ESXi host into the maintenance mode before performing below action.

  • The nsx-nestdb service can be restarted manually using the command:
    • /etc/init.d/nsx-nestdb restart
  • To validate the status of the nsx-nestdb service use the command:
    • /etc/init.d/nsx-nestdb status
  • The controllers are available when executing the get controllers command from the ESXi transport node:
    • nsxcli -c get controllers

  • The status of the ESXi Transport node on NSX UI now shows as UP:

  • If in case status reports a degraded status, Restart proxy and opsagent services using below commands.
    • /etc/init.d/nsx-proxy restart
    • /etc/init.d/nsx-opsagent restart

Additional Information

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