NSX upgrade pre-check fails on SDDC with error: "NSX audit not connected transport nodes validator failed"

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• The pre-check for NSX upgrade for ESXi hosts, from SDDC fails and reports error: "NSX audit not connected transport nodes validator failed" for multiple ESXi hosts in the cluster.

• Checking on NSX UI, for all the ESXi host reporting throwing above error, their status is degraded in NSX.

• Validated the manager and controller connectivity for the hosts. They are connected and are working as expected.
• No services are down across any ESXi host.
• However, pNIC/Bond reports one  adapter as being down on all these ESXi hosts.

• Checking further, the adapter "vusb0" is reported as down on NSX UI.

• The vusb0 adapter is not attached on the DVS configured with DVS, and is not being used for VM/ESXi host networking.
• However it is still reported as down to NSX, resulting in the host being in degraded state.

Environment

VMware NSX

Cause

The vusb0 adapter is created automatically by the vendor-provided custom ISO used to install or upgrade ESXi. It enables a secure connection to the physical server console directly from the host operating system.

As the vusb0 adapter is reported to NSX as down, the ESXi hosts are set to Degraded state.

Resolution

vusb0 adapters needs to be disabled across all the ESXi hosts in order to resolve the Host degraded state in NSX. To disable the vusb interface in the remote management application that is used by the appropriate hardware (Dell for iDRAC, HPE for iLO, etc.), please follow the respective server vendor documentation.

Once the adapter is disabled, the ESXi host will reflect its status as "Up" on the NSX UI.

After this, the upgrade pre-check for NSX should pass from the SDDC.

Additional Information

For more information regarding vusb0, please refer article: ESXi creates standard switch vSwitchBMC with uplink vusb0 automatically after upgrading to 8.0.3 version