Systemctl Reports Degraded State on SDDC Manager even though services like domain-manager, operations-manager, lcm and commonsvcs are active and healthy

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

• Upon connecting to the SDDC Manager via SSH, executing the systemctl status command returns a degraded state, as illustrated below:

root@<sddc_manager> [ /home/vcf ]# systemctl status
● <sddc_manager_fqdn>
    State: degraded
     Jobs: 0 queued
   Failed: 1 units
    Since: Tue YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss UTC; ##h ago

• Executing the same command with "--failed" parameter shows output similar to below

root@<sddc_manager> [ /home/vcf/]# systemctl --failed
  UNIT         LOAD   ACTIVE SUB    DESCRIPTION
● vaos.service loaded failed failed LSB: Guest OS Initiatization Script

LOAD   = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded.
ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB.
SUB    = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.
1 loaded units listed.

•  The SOS health check reports clean and all critical services (domainmanager, operationsmanager, lcm, commonsvcs) are verified to be in active status as shown in below example:

root@<sddc_manager> [ /home/vcf ]# systemctl status domainmanager 
● domainmanager.service - VMware Cloud Foundation Domain Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/domainmanager.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since <day> YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss UTC; ##h ago

 

 

Environment

VCF 4.x, 5.x

Cause

This is caused as the vaos service is disabled by default on the SDDC Manager prior to 9.x post firstboot.

Resolution

The vaos service is an native component of the underlying Photon OS. Within the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) environment, this service is disabled by default on the SDDC Manager appliance. This state is expected and does not impact the operational stability or functionality of the SDDC Manager. No corrective action is required, and this benign condition can be safely disregarded.

Additional Information