Disabling Witness Host Upgrade in VCF SDDC Manager and vCenter

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

When performing a stretched cluster upgrade via VCF SDDC Manager, the ESX stretched cluster upgrade workflow may fail or become blocked due to issues specifically related to the Witness Host.

Common scenarios include:

• Use case 1: A Witness Host upgrade fails within vCenter, which subsequently blocks the entire ESXi cluster upgrade progress.
• Use case 2: Unexpected failures occur during the VCF ESXi cluster upgrade workflow that are traced back to Witness Host compatibility or connectivity.

Environment

VCF SDDC Manager: 9
VMware vCenter Server: 9

Cause

SDDC Manager is programmed to include a virtual appliance-based VSAN witness hosts in the automated upgrade orchestration.

If the Witness host is not in a Ready state or encounters a manual failure, the SDDC Manager may fail the upgrade, blocking upgrade of the data host from proceeding.

Resolution

To bypass the Witness host, and proceed with the data node upgrade, you must configure this feature flag in SDDC Manager.

When this property is enabled, the Witness Host will be excluded, allowing the physical ESXi hosts to upgrade successfully.

SDDC Manager Version	vCenter Version	SDDC Manager Flag	vCenter Flag
9.0	<9.1	lcm.vsan.witness.host.upgrade.disable=true	Not Required

The below are the steps to enable sddc manager feature flag.

To disable the witness host from upgrade, follow the steps below:

Configure SDDC Manager Feature Flag

1. SSH into the SDDC Manager appliance using the vcf user and switch to root using the su command.
2. Navigate to the configuration directory and edit the application-prod.properties file:
   vi /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-app/conf/application-prod.properties
3. Add or update the following configuration property to true:
   lcm.vsan.witness.host.upgrade.disable=true
4. Save and close the file.
5. Restart the SDDC Manager LCM service to apply the changes:
   systemctl restart lcm

Post-Upgrade Note:
Once the cluster upgrade is successfully completed, it is highly recommended to revert these settings to false and restart the respective services. This ensures that the Witness host is included in future lifecycle management activities and stays compliant with the rest of the cluster.