HCX Public Site Not Loading / Timing Out

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

In situation where the VMware HCX public site (Manager UI / Service Portal) fails to load in a browser and ultimately times out, showing errors such as site not reachable or loading failure. This issue can prevent access to the HCX Manager UI, impacting administration, migrations, and connectivity operations. 

• Browser displays timeout / site cannot be reached when accessing https://<HCX_Manager_FQDN>:443

• HCX Manager UI does not load or completes URL resolution but stalls

• No response from the HCX appliance on standard UI ports

• Intermittent access, sessions dropping unexpectedly

 

 

Environment

VMware HCX

Cause

The HCX public site failing to load is usually caused by infrastructure, service, or configuration issues rather than a single software bug. Possible underlying causes include:

1. Network Connectivity Issues

   • Firewall rules or network ACLs are blocking or throttling traffic to HCX Manager ports (e.g., HTTPS / 443).

   • Underlay network interruptions between client and the HCX Manager.

   • Intermediate proxies or load balancers interfering with connection.KB: 321629

2. DNS or Time Synchronization Problems

   • HCX Manager hostname not resolvable due to DNS issues.

   • Time synchronization (NTP) mismatch between appliances and clients can cause TLS handshake failures.KB: 321629

3. HCX Services Not Running or Degraded

   • Core HCX services such as appliance-management, web-engine, or other components have stopped or are unresponsive.KB: 328952

4. Resource Constraints on HCX Manager

   • High disk usage, memory exhaustion, or other resource limits can prevent the HTTP service from responding.

5. Browser Access Issues

   • Cached sessions, old tokens, or unsupported user settings (e.g., proxy / cookie settings).

Resolution

1- Validate Network Path and DNS

1. From a client or jump host, attempt a connectivity test to the HCX Manager FQDN or IP over TCP port 443.

   • For example:

      

     telnet <HCX_Manager_IP> 443

   • A successful handshake indicates basic connectivity.

2. Verify DNS resolution (client can resolve the HCX Manager FQDN).

3. Ensure intermediate firewalls allow outbound / inbound HTTPS (443) traffic to the HCX Manager.

Check for blocked ports or misconfigured proxy settings that may interfere with direct access to /443.KB: 321629

2- Confirm HCX Services Health

1. SSH into the HCX Manager appliance using its admin account.

2. Check status of services — especially web-engine, appliance-management, and other core processes:

    

   systemctl status web-engine systemctl status appliance-management

3. If services are stopped or failed, attempt graceful restart:

    

   systemctl restart web-engine systemctl restart appliance-management

4. If a service fails again, examine logs with:

    

   journalctl -u appliance-management -xe

   to isolate specific service errors.KB: 373583

3- Check System Resource Utilization

1. Ensure the HCX Manager appliance is not low on disk space, memory, or CPU:

    

   $ df -h



   $ top

2. Free up space if any critical partition (e.g., /common) is nearing capacity.

3. Restart appliance services or reboot the appliance if necessary (during maintenance window).

4- Browser Troubleshooting

1. Clear browser cache and cookies or try a different browser.

2. Confirm browser is not using outdated proxies or security settings.

3. Validate that the HTTPS certificate on the HCX Manager is valid and trusted by the browser.

Additional Information

HCX Site pairing fails with error "NumberFormatException" (80210)

Resync HCX service mesh: "Error in communicating with remote side to find NSX types" (328952)

Impact / Risks

If the HCX public site is unavailable or timing out, the following impacts may occur:

HCX configuration workflows may fail or become inaccessible.

Administrative tasks such as site pairing validation, service mesh updates, and migration management may be blocked.

No new migrations can be scheduled from the HCX Connector or source HCX Cloud Manager.

Existing Network Extension services will remain active indefinitely; however, no configuration changes can be made to them.

The only supported operation on existing Network Extensions during this condition is “unstretch”, which can be forced from the target HCX Cloud Manager side.