The impact of switching NSX Manager nodes from IP to FQDN

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

This KB outlines the impact of switching NSX Manager references from IP addresses to Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs), particularly in the context of backup and restore operations.

• Any DNS misconfiguration or outage can disrupt NSX operations.
• Restore operations will fail if the FQDN used during backup is not resolvable.
• Deployment failures may occur due to expired certificates or OVF validation issues

Environment

VMware NSX

Cause

Switching NSX Manager references from IP to FQDN introduces a dependency on DNS resolution.

If DNS is misconfigured or unavailable, backup and restore operations may fail.

Resolution

See KB 386603 for the steps to switch from IP to FQDN on the NSX Manager nodes.

 

Things to watch out for when using FQDN on the manager nodes: 

• Ensure DNS servers are redundant, monitored, and highly available.
• Use the same FQDN during both backup and restore operations.
• Avoid using uppercase or mixed-case FQDNs; NSX requires lowercase FQDNs. 

Additional Information

Note: If issues arise, you can revert to back to IP-based references, but this requires reconfiguring backup jobs and ensuring IP reachability across sites.