VMware Aria Operations for Logs Triggered Admin Alert: Cannot take over High Availability IP address as it is already held by another machine

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• The Aria Operations for Logs UI is inaccessible through the load balancer FQDN/IP.

• The ILB status shows as unavailable in the Node UI ( Management → Cluster)

• Below email notification is received from VMware Aria Operations for Logs:

  "VMware Aria Operations for Logs Admin Alert: Cannot take over High Availability IP address <ILB-IP> as it is already held by another machine (Host = <Aria operations for logs Node-FQDN>)."
  This alert is about your VMware Aria Operations for Logs installation on https://<ILB-FQDN>/
  Cannot take over High Availability IP address <ILB-IP> as it is already held by another machine (Host = <Node-FQDN>) triggered at 2025-09-29T08:32:34.394Z
  This notification was generated from Operations for Logs node (Host = <Node-FQDN>, Node Identifier = <Node-ID>).
  VMware Aria Operations for Logs is unable to acquire the High Availability IP address <ILB-IP> because another host within the same physical network is holding the IP address.

Environment

VMware Aria Operations for logs 8.17

VMware Aria Operations for logs 8.18

Cause

The ILB-IP is marked unavailable because its IP address had been assigned to another virtual machine.

Resolution

To resolve the issue:

1. Release the load balancer IP address from the conflicting system to allow the HA service to properly bind to the correct IP

2. Restore normal load balancing functionality.