"Host Status is Unknown" – Compliance Check Failure

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When checking host compliance for the upgrade, the process fails with the following error:
"Host Status is Unknown"

less /var/run/log/lifecycle.log on the ESXi host shows that there are name resilution failures as shown below:

lifecycle [11794595] : Downloader: 214 Download failed: <urlopen error [Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution>, 5 retry left ...
lifecycle [11794595] : Downloader: 214 Download failed: <urlopen error [Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution>, 4 retry left ...
lifecycle [11794595] : Downloader: 214 Download failed: <urlopen error [Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution>, 3 retry left ...
lifecycle [11794595]: Downloader: 214 Download failed: <urlopen error [Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution>,
lifecycle [11794595]: Downloader: 214 Download failed: <urlopen error [Errno -3] Temporary failure in name resolution>, 1 retry left ...
lifecycle [11794595] : DepotCollection: 379 Could not download from depot at http://<vCenterIP>\:9084/vum/repository/hostupdate/ micro-depot vendor-vmw_metadata-167 index

Remediation skipped for all hosts

Remediation of cluster failed
<HOST FQDN>- Skipped remediation for this host
Skipped host 'FQDN' because its compliance information is unavailable. Please check the host status
A failure occurred when starting a host compliance check operation on host 'FDQN" : Error: com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.not_allowed_in_current_state Messages: com.vmware.esx.task.contention<Another task is in progress. Please retry later.>

 

less /var/log/vmware/vmware-updatemgr/vum-server/vmware-vum-server.log: 

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS info vmware-vum-server[1590603] [Originator@6876 sub=Activation] [activationValidator 370] Leave Validate. Succeeded for integrity.VcIntegrity.probe on target: Integrity.VcIntegrity
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS info vmware-vum-server[134888] [Originator@6876 sub=SsoClient] Successfully acquired token: SamlToken [subject={Name: vpxd-extension-xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx; Domain:vsphere.local}, groups=[{Name: Users; Domain:vsphere.lo
cal}, {Name: SolutionUsers; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: SystemConfiguration.Administrators; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: ComponentManager.Administrators; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: LicenseService.Administrators; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: ActAsUsers; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: ServiceProviderUsers; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: vStatsGroup; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: AnalyticsService.Administrators; Domain:vsphere.local}, {Name: Everyone; Domain:vsphere.local}], delegationChain=[], startTime=YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS, endTime=YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS, renewCount=0, delegableCount=10, isSolution=true, type=Saml_HOK]
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS info vmware-vum-server[134888] [Originator@6876 sub=Telemetry] [TelemetryManager 261] Sending telemetry data: {"@type":"pman_error_report","taskId":"EDXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXX-XXXXXXXX|XXXXXXXXX-XXXXX-XXXX-XXXXXX","entityId
":"XXXXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXXX-XXXXXX|host 181XXX","parentTaskId":"","errorMessageId":"com.vmware.vcIntegrity.lifecycle.HostScan.TaskApiError","errorMessage":"A failure occurred when starting a host compliance check operation on host 'FDQN' : Error:\n   com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.not_allowed_in_current_state\nMessages:\n   com.vmware.esx.task.contention<Another task is in progress. Please retry later.>\n","errorTime":"YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS"}

Note: We don't observe any name resolution errors in the vpxd logs, as the hostname is already defined in the /etc/hosts file in vCenter.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.X

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.X

 

Cause

The issue is caused by name resolution failure of the ESXi host in DNS.

Resolution

Check the DNS entries for the ESXi host to ensure they are correctly configured and resolvable from the vCenter Server.

• cat /etc/resolv.conf