Allocating loadBalancerIP to Service a second time is stuck in State Pending

Products

• VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Integrated Edition

Issue/Introduction

You are no longer able to assign a certain loadbalancer IP to a K8S service. The assignment worked fine the first time, but after re-using that IP for something else the service is now stuck with a pending IP assignment. Choosing another IP works fine. However, you would like to use that specific IP because, for example, there are already firewall rules associated with that IP.

"kubectl get svc -A" shows that the IP is currently not assigned to any other service (column "EXTERNAL-IP"), so it SHOULD be available. According to ncp.stdout.log on a master node the error is caused by NSX, due to:

2025-10-16T09:40:07.226Z ########-... NSX 187202 - [nsx@#### comp="nsx-container-ncp" subcomp="ncp" level="ERROR" errorCode="NCP00164"] nsx_ujo.ncp.nsx.manager.base_k8s_nsxapi Failed to allocate ip from ip pool: NSX IP ###.###.###.### is already allocated in ip pool ####-...

When logging into the NSX Manager web interface a search for that IP returns no results, but searching for the display name of the floating ip pool and viewing it's allocated IPs shows that this IP is indeed allocated to that pool.

Trying to delete that entry via NSX API call has no effect on the error symptoms on the TKGi side, and the IP is still shown as "allocated" when checking the floating ip pool in the NSX Manager web interface.

 

Resolution

Please, contact Broadcom support to solve this issue.