DRS turned off or toggled off: NSX Edge Node Cluster Resource Pool Deleted

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

Disabling Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) on an NSX Edge node cluster results in the deletion of associated resource pools. This behavior can lead to loss of resource pool configurations, including custom threshold settings.

If a configuration backup or snapshot of the resource pools is available, restoration is straightforward. In the absence of such backups, steps outlined below to be followed

Newly created resource pools will not retain previous threshold configurations and will instead inherit default values. This may impact workload distribution and performance if thresholds were previously customized.

To Note: Edge cluster are still showing as online and running at this stage!

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 4.x
VMware Cloud Foundation 5.x

Cause

DRS was toggled off from the UI 

Resolution

Resolution Steps: Restoring NSX Edge Node Deployment After Resource Pool Removal

Ensure there is a Snapshot in place. 

1. Create a New Resource Pool (confirm if required)

• Name the new resource pool to closely match the original name.

• You may reuse the exact name of the previous resource pool if known.

• Note: This step ensures all Edge node VMs are grouped under a consistent resource pool for redeployment.

2. Move Existing Edge Node VMs

• Using the vSphere UI, manually drag and drop the existing Edge node VMs into the newly created resource pool.

3. Test with Resizer Tool

• Link for the resizer tool : https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/312196/vmware-cloud-foundation-nsxt-edge-node-v.html 

• Run the resizer tool with --dryrun and --force options to validate configuration.

  Example: resize.sh --dryrun --form-factor LARGE --force --edge-cluster <edge-cluster-name>

• Confirm that the output includes a valid compute_ID for the target resource pool.

• The compute_ID can be confirmed from the NSX Manager UI.

• 

 

4. Apply Configuration Changes (this will make changes)

• Re-run the same command without the --dryrun flag:

  resize.sh --form-factor LARGE --force --edge-cluster <edge-cluster-name>
  

• This will:

  • Delete the existing Edge nodes (as per the resizer tool methods).

  • Redeploy new Edge nodes into the newly created resource pool.

5. Post-Deployment Validation

• Confirm that all Edge nodes are successfully deployed within the new resource pool.

• Perform checks from the SDDC Manager UI.

  • Validate the Edge Nodes present match up with the NSX T Manager UI.

• Verify cluster health and connectivity via NSX Manager UI or API.

 

Testing and Checks – End Result and Confirmation Steps

To ensure consistency between the NSX configuration and the SDDC Manager database, the following validation steps were performed:

NSX ↔ SDDC Manager Alignment

• Query the SDDC Manager Postgres Database 

  psql -h localhost -U postgres -d platform -c "SELECT * FROM nsxt_edge_cluster WHERE name='<edge cluster name>'"
  

  • Retrieved edge cluster details from the nsxt_edge_cluster table.

  • Verified that the node IDs match those displayed in NSX Manager. (cross reference checks)

• Query the SDDC Manager Inventory API

  curl localhost/inventory/nsxt-edgeclusters?id=<edge_UUID> | json_pp
  

  • Queried the inventory API using the edge cluster UUID.

  • Confirmed that the returned edge cluster ID matches the expected configuration.

These checks validated that the NSX Edge cluster is correctly registered and reflected in both the NSX Manager and SDDC Manager database, ensuring deployment integrity.

Additional Information

VMware Cloud Foundation NSX-T Edge Node Virtual Machine Resizing Tool- 

• https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/312196/vmware-cloud-foundation-nsxt-edge-node-v.html