Error: "Datastore Name <Actual_Datastore_Name> is not present in unassigned hosts" when expanding a cluster with 1Gbps NICs in VCF 9.0.2

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to add an already commissioned host to an existing cluster in VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.2, the expansion task fails.
No actual task initiates in the UI; instead, an incompatibility error is generated stating:

"Datastore Name <Actual_Datastore_Name> is not present in unassigned hosts."

<Actual_Datastore_Name> refers to the primary datastore of the cluster being expanded.

Reviewing the SDDC Manager access logs (/var/log/vmware/vcf/sddc-manager-ui-app/access.log) reveals a successful GET request, querying the host compliance.
The GET request is successful [200] but it shows the Host as being incompatible - i.e. isCompliantForAddToCluster=false.

 

# cd /var/log/vmware/vcf/sddc-manager-ui-app/
# less -i access.log

<Data and Time> <IP> "GET /ui/api/v1/hosts?status=UNASSIGNED_USEABLE&storageType=VMFS_FC&datastoreName=<Actual_Datastore_Name>&page=1&size=1&esxiVersion=9.&physicalNicCountFrom=<TBD>&isCompliantForAddToCluster=false HTTP/1.0" 200 1824 - 351.913 ms - "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/145.0.0.0

 

Environment

 

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.2

• Clusters utilizing 1Gbps NICs for Management traffic

 

Cause

VCF 9.0.0 introduced a precheck requiring all physical NICs to operate at a minimum speed of 10Gbps.
While VCF 9.0.2 reintroduced support for 1Gbps NICs, explicitly for management traffic (when isolated to a dedicated vSphere Distributed Switch), a regression in the cluster expansion prechecks incorrectly enforces the 10Gbps minimum speed requirement on the host.
This prevents the host from being added to the cluster and surfaces a misleading datastore absence error.

Documentation below
9.0.0 https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-9-0-and-later/9-0/building-your-private-cloud-infrastructure/host-management/commission-hosts.html

All physical NICs must have a minimum speed of 10 Gbps

9.0.2 https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/vcf/vcf-9-0-and-later/9-0/release-notes/vmware-cloud-foundation-9-0-2-release-notes/vcf-installer-9-0-2-0.html#GUID-e85606ca-5cdb-4a04-b2b7-1d17c897efd7-en_id-726e65ed-5a6a-4a8c-8fd2-1fc2f23224ec   

Product Support Notice
Hosts with NIC speed lower than 10Gbit used only for management were blocked and deployment of VCF management and workload domains failed. With VCF 9.0.2 and later, ESX hosts with 1Gbit NIC are supported under the following conditions.
In the management domain or workload domain creation workflow, on the Network settings page, for VM Management Network, the Use a separate, dedicated network option is selected.
The vSphere Distributed Switch with the 1Gbit+ NIC is used for management traffic only.
A separate vSphere Distributed Switch for vSAN, vMotion, and NSX Traffic uses one or more 10Gbit NIC

Resolution

VMware Engineering is aware of this issue and is working towards a fix in a future VCF release.

WORKAROUND 
To bypass the physical NIC validation scenario, disable the speed check in SDDC Manager before commissioning and adding the host.

1. Take a snapshot of the SDDC Manager appliance.
2. Log in to the SDDC Manager appliance via SSH and switch to the root user.
3. Append the configuration flag to disable NIC speed validation by running the following command:

echo "enable.speed.of.physical.nics.validation=false" >> /etc/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/application.properties

 

4. Restart the Operations Manager service to apply the change:

systemctl restart operationsmanager

5. Recommission the host using the 1Gbps NIC.
Use the vSphere Client (or SDDC Manager UI) to expand the cluster with the newly commissioned host.