ESXi host fails to join the Supervisor Cluster with Error: "context deadline exceeded" due to vds-vsip module failed to load

Products

• VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service

Issue/Introduction

• During a Supervisor Cluster upgrade, certificate rotation, or any configuration change that triggers a restart of the spherelet service, an ESXi host may fail to join the cluster.
  
  

• The vSphere Workload Management UI reports a failure with the error:
  
  A general system error occurred. Error message: context deadline exceeded.

• The affected host remains in a "Starting" or "Error" state within the Supervisor Cluster view.

• The /var/log/spherelet.log on the ESXi host contains the following entry:
  
  cannot load module vds-vsip: cmd '/bin/vmkload_mod /usr/lib/vmware/vmkmod/vds-vsip' failed with status 1

Environment

• vSphere Kubernetes Service 8.0

Cause

• This problem might occur during a Supervisor cluster upgrade, certificate upgrade, or any other Supervisor configuration change that restarts spherelet. During these operations, the vds-vsip kernel module fails to load, which prevents the host from completing admission into the Supervisor Cluster.

Resolution

Reboot the affected ESXi host(s) to clear the kernel state and allow the module to initialize.

1. Place the affected ESXi host in Maintenance Mode. Ensure all running workloads migrate to other hosts in the cluster.

2. Reboot the ESXi host.

3. After the reboot completes, exit Maintenance Mode.

4. The spherelet service will automatically attempt to reload the module and join the Supervisor Cluster.

5. Monitor the Workload Management tab in the vSphere Client to verify the host status transitions to "Ready."

Additional Information

Refer to known issues section of the vSphere Supervisor 8.0 Release Notes for more information.