SDDC Manager Deployment Internal Server Error in VCF 5.2 during Instance recovery

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager

Issue/Introduction

When performing a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Management Domain recovery or partial bring-up on VCF 5.2, SDDC Manager deployment fails with an **Internal Server Error** in the Cloud Builder UI. 

The following exceptions can be seen in vcf-bringup.log :

• com.vmware.evo.sddc.orchestrator.model.error.ExecutionException: Error occurred while composing FsmSpec from workflow recipe bring-up-Ems
• Reason: Could not find recipe with name EnableVsanDedupOnCluster
• Reason: Could not find recipe with name RegisterbringupDeploymentForCEIP (if capitalization is incorrect)

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2.x.

Cause

The internal workflow recipes for VCF 5.2 have been updated, and several actions present in previous versions (such as VCF 4.x or 5.1) have been deprecated or removed:

1. Removed Action: The EnableVsanDedupOnCluster action has been removed from the VCF 5.2.
2. Case Sensitivity: The action RegisterBringupDeploymentForCEIP is case-sensitive; using a lowercase 'b' in Registerbringup will cause a recipe lookup failure.

Public documentation for Management Domain recovery may still contain references to these removed actions for version 5.2.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must use a workflowspec-ems.json file that is specifically compatible with the VCF 5.2 recipe set.

Steps to Modify the Workflow for Partial Bring-up in VCF 5.2:

1. Obtain the VCF 5.2 Base File: Retrieve the original workflowspec-ems.json from the Cloud Builder appliance or from Broadcom Support.
2. Remove Deprecated Actions: Ensure that the EnableVsanDedupOnCluster action is entirely removed from the JSON structure.
3. Correct Capitalization: Ensure the CEIP registration action is exactly: "Action": "RegisterBringupDeploymentForCEIP".
4. Strip Post-vCenter Tasks: For a partial bring-up (vCenter only), remove all actions starting from InstallNsxt through to the end of the file.
5. Retry Deployment: Upload the corrected JSON to Cloud Builder and restart the deployment process.

If you require a pre-validated workflowspec-ems.json for VCF 5.2, please contact Broadcom Support and reference this article.