Unable to connect a newly deployed vCenter appliance VM to an existing distributed port group

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• After deploying a new vCenter appliance, attempts to connect its network adapter to the Management distributed port group fail with message: "Addition or reconfiguration of network adapters attached to non-ephemeral distributed virtual port groups (Name_of_distributed_port_group) is not supported"
  
  

Environment

VMware vCenter Server
VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

• You are attempting to connect the vCenter server network adapter to a static (non-ephemeral) distributed virtual port group, which is not supported.
• The reason that vCenter Server (and ESXi) Management networks must connect to a distributed port group configured with ephemeral port bindings is that if vCenter goes down for any reason, these network adapters can still be disconnected and reconnected to other port groups and switches through the ESXi host.  This is unlike distributed port groups configured with static bindings, which can only be assigned through vCenter. 

Resolution

• Create an ephemeral port group on the same vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) with the same VLAN as the DPG that the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) currently uses. 
• The Broadcom TechDocs page "Static (non-ephemeral) or ephemeral port binding on a vSphere Distributed Switch" provides further details on this.