vSAN Data Protection Page is Blank in vCenter on VLSR 9.0.X Combined Appliance

Products

• VMware vSAN
• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

On a VMware Live Recovery (VLSR) 9.0.X combined appliance, the following symptoms may be observed:

• This issue occurs after a brownfield import of a vCenter Server with an existing vSAN cluster running on 9.0.2 into VCF-Ops/VLSR 9.0.3.
• The vSAN Data Protection (DP) page in the vSphere Client appears blank or fails to load.
• The vSAN health alarm 'vSAN data protection service health' status changes from Green to Red.
• The vSAN health interface may display a "No Healthy Upstream" error message.
• Running nmctl on the appliance shows the system state as 'routable' and online, but the vCenter UI does not display data.

This issue is not related to the network configuration pointed out in vSAN Data Protection module is not loading in vCenter.


 

Environment

VLSR 9.0.X combined appliance
vSAN Data Protection

Cause

This issue occurs when the VLSR combined appliance is configured with a short hostname rather than an FQDN.
In version 9.0.X, the combined appliance architecture requires consistent FQDN usage across service registrations and certificates to maintain healthy communication (upstream) with the vCenter vSAN DP module.
During the import process, if the appliance is registered or identified by a short hostname rather than a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN), the service mesh communication fails to establish a secure upstream connection to the vCenter DP module.

Resolution

To resolve this, you must update the appliance hostname to its FQDN and reconfigure the appliance certificates.

Step 1: Verify Hostname and DNS Resolution

1. Log in to the VLSR appliance via SSH as root.
2. Execute the following command to check the current system configuration:
         # nmctl
   
   
3. Verify that the System Name displays the full FQDN (e.g., hostname.domain.com) rather than just the short name.
4. Ensure that DNS resolution is working correctly for the FQDN and IP address:
      # nslookup hostname.domain.com   

      # nslookup ###.###.###.###
   
   
5. Review the network configuration file to ensure DNS entries are present:
         # cat /etc/systemd/network/10-eth0.network

Step 2: Update Hostname to FQDN

For the VLSR 9.0.3 combined appliance, follow the specific procedure to update the hostname:

1. If the hostname is in short form, update it to its FQDN using the nmctl:
           # nmctl set-hostname hostname.domain.com 

    
2. Refer to the Photon OS 5 Knowledge Base article for detailed steps on changing the hostname for combined appliances.

Step 3: Update Certificates and Reconfigure

1. After the hostname change, you must update the appliance certificate to reflect the new FQDN.
2. Navigate to the appliance VAMI (port 5480) and go to the Certificates tab to replace/generate a new certificate.
3. Reconfigure the appliance registration with vCenter under the Summary tab to ensure the new identity is propagated across all services.
4. As a best practice, restart the services or reboot the appliance for all changes to take effect across the service mesh. To restart the services, click the Services tab and restart the srm-server and dr-client services.

Step 4: Verification

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.
2. Navigate to the vSAN cluster > Monitor > vSAN > Data Protection.
3. Confirm that the vSAN DP page now loads correctly and the health status is Green.

 

Additional Information

Other useful articles you may require while troubleshooting this issue: 

After upgrading to Usage Meter 9.0, updating DNS from VAMI shows duplicate nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf
Appliance deployment is unable to resolve .local domain names