NSX-T Upgrade Pre-Check Error: In-Place Upgrade Is Not Supported for Hosts with Service Insertion Enabled

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

In the NSX-T UI, navigate to System → Service Deployment. You will notice that the partner service is not registered.

Validate the presence of the slot 12 filter on the ESXi host Transport Node for which the pre-check alarm is raised.

root@esx-01:~] summarize-dvfilter | grep "slot 12"
slot 12 
slot 12 
slot 12 

Environment

VMware NSX 

VMware NSX-T Data center 

Cause

NSX-T does not support in-place host upgrades when third-party Service Deployment/Service Insertion is configured. According to limitations on in-place upgrade, hosts with active or residual service-insertion filters cannot proceed with an in-place upgrade. In this case, the slot-12 filter attached to the VM vNIC (used for North-South and East-West Service Insertion) was not removed correctly after the Service Deployment was deleted, leaving stale service-insertion state on the host and triggering the pre-check failure.

Resolution

Follow the steps outlined in the workaround section of KB article #329042 to properly disable and remove the slot-12 filter from the ESXi host VM vNICs. Once the service-insertion filter is cleared, re-run the NSX upgrade pre-check and confirm that it completes successfully.