ESXi host not reachable after reboot or upgrade due to VDS(Virtual Distributed Switch) uplinks are lost

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• Host is not reachable on the network, post a reboot or an upgrade
• The uplinks of the VDS are missing, the physical network adapter vmnic is not assigned to an uplink, and the network connectivity is lost on the VDS.

Below is a snippet of the output of esxcfg-vswitch -l command.

• In the jumpstart-esxcli-stdout.log file, the following error is observed:

<YYYY-MM-DD>T<HH:MM:SS> execution of 'boot networking restore --vswitches' failed : Failed to restore virtual switches: Unable to complete Sysinfo operation.  Please see the VMkernel log file for more details.: Not found

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Cause

This issue is caused by a synchronization mismatch between the configstore database and the host's active VDS configuration (which can be verified using net-dvs -l). This discrepancy usually occurs following a system upgrade.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must identify and remove the stale network entries from the ESXi Config Store.

1. Identify the discrepancy: Run the following commands to compare the active runtime configuration with the persistent database:

   • Runtime: # net-dvs -l | grep -E '^switch|common.alias'
   • Config Store: # configstorecli config current get -c esx -g network_vds -k switches | grep -E 'name|uuid'

2. Verify Stale Entries: Note any UUID or Switch Name that appears in the configstorecli output but is not present in the net-dvs -l output.

3. Delete the Stale Entry: Remove the invalid entry using the identified UUID/Name:
    # configstorecli config current delete -c esx -g network_vds -k switches -i "STALE_UUID_OR_NAME" (Example: configstorecli config current delete -c esx -g network_vds -k switches -i "00 11 22 33...")

4. Verification: Restart the ESXi host and verify that the uplinks are attached to the VDS.

Additional Information

Reference: During Migration from VCF 4.x to 5.x ESXI disconnects during upgrade after first boot. It loses the network connection