Enabling vSphere HA fails with error: "vCenter Server is unable to find a master vSphere HA agent in Cluster in Data Center"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Unable to enable vSphere HA for a cluster.

When enabling vSphere HA on a cluster in vCenter, the task fails with the following errors on the cluster: 

• "vCenter Server is unable to find a master vSphere HA agent in Cluster in Data Center"
• "Cannot find vSphere HA master agent"

And the following errors on the hosts: 

• "The vSphere HA availability state of this host has changed to Uninitialized"
• "The vSphere HA availability state of this host has changed to Retry"
• "Cannot complete configuration of vSphere HA agent on this host. Setting desired image spec for cluster failed" 

The following tests for vCenter/ESXi connectivity succeed: 

• nc -z <vCenter IP> 9084 
• curl -v telnet://<ESXi host IP>:443
• curl -v telnet://<ESXi host IP>:902

In /var/log/vmware/vmware-updatemgr/vum-server/vmware-vum-server.log on vCenter: 

error vmware-vum-server[34975] [Originator@6876 sub=com.vmware.vcIntegrity.lifecycle.SetSolutionTask] [SetSolutionTask 274]  Set solution failed. entityId: domain-c** Problems found while validating the new
software spec: {
-->     "errors": [
-->         {
-->             "id": "com.vmware.vcIntegrity.lifecycle.EsxImage.SolutionNotFound",
-->             "message": {
-->                 "args": [
-->                     "com.vmware.vsphere-ha",
-->                     "8.0.3-22837324"
-->                 ],
-->                 "default_message": "Software Solution com.vmware.vsphere-ha with version 8.0.3-22088981 cannot be found in depot.",
-->                 "id": "com.vmware.vcIntegrity.lifecycle.EsxImage.SolutionNotFound",
-->                 "localized": null,
-->                 "params": null
-->             },

The Image card version may match the version of ESXi. 

Environment

vCenter Server 8.x

vCenter Server 9.x

vSphere ESXi 8.x

vSphere ESXi 9.x

Cause

Lifecycle Manager download sources are not set up. Therefore, necessary updates to FDM VIBs cannot be downloaded and applied. 

Resolution

1. Configure Lifecycle Manager with the proper token URLs: VCF authenticated downloads configuration update instructions > Configure vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) and VMware Update Manager (VUM)
2. Cluster > Updates > Edit Image
3. Ensure the proper version of ESXi is selected with the correct Vendor Add-Ons if required
4. Validate the Image card 
5. Save the Image card 
6. Enable vSphere HA