vSphere HA initialization failing on cluster

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to turn on vSphere HA for a cluster and the tasks "Configuring vSphere HA on the cluster" and "Remediate HA" fail with errors like:

• "Cannot complete the vSphere HA configuration agent on the host 'Applying HA VIBs on the cluster encountered a failure.'"
• "A general system error occurred: Installing HA components failed on the cluster"
• "vSphere HA host status"
• "vSphere HA agent on this host has an error.  vSphere HA agent cannot be installed or configured"
• "There was an error unconfiguring the vSphere HA agent on this host. To solve this problem, reconnect the host to vCenter Server."

The connectivity between the ESXI hosts seems good and Quick Stats is up to date for the hosts.  The cluster is a Lifecycle Manager image-based cluster, and the hosts are showing not compliant.

Environment

vSphere 7

vSphere 8

Cause

In an SSH session to one of the hosts in the cluster where the vSphere HA errors are occurring, you see a error similar to the following:

/var/log/lifecycle.log

YYYY-MM_DDTHH:MM:SSZZ Er(11) lifecycle[<opID>] : imagemanagerct1:90 vmware.esximage.Errors.DepotConnectError: ([MetadataDownloadError ('http://<vcenter fqdn>/vum/repository/hostupdate/__micro-depo__vendor-vmw__metadata-##__index__z.xml'

This error means the ESXI host cannot reach the vCenter Server on 9084 to download information and the FDM vib needed to enable vSphere HA.

Ports like 9084 and 9087 that required for vSphere Lifecycle Manager communications are blocked from the ESXi Host Management IP address to the vCenter Server Management IP address.

Resolution

• Check the above ports from an SSH session to one or more of the ESXI hosts in the cluster with these commands:

nc -zv <vcenter_fqdn> 9084

nc -zv <vcenter_fqdn> 9087

• If they are blocked, then work with your network team to make sure those ports are open from the ESXi Host Management IP address to the vCenter Server Management IP address.

Additional Information

vSphere Port Webpage

Port requirements for VMware vSphere ESXi