NSX Manager cluster node backups fail with Error code 29115 due to expired SFTP account.

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

• The VMware NSX Manager cluster node backups to an external SFTP server are failing.

The NSX UI displays the following error:

Error: Authentication failed on fileserver sftp://<ip-address>:22/<file_path>/cluster-node-backups.(Error code: 29115)

• The NSX Manager logs show authentication failures explicitly stating the account has expired:2026-03-25T05:50:32.075Z : NSX 2665436 SYSTEM [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-manager" errorCode="MP29115" level="ERROR" reqId="ef52####-fa6d-####-94ee-####e789####" subcomp="manager" username="admin"] Cluster backup had error

2026-03-25T05:50:32.094Z : NSX 2665436 - [nsx@6876 comp="nsx-manager" errorCode="MP29115" level="ERROR" reqId="ef524852-fa6d-4334-94ee-2233e789b62c" s2comp="backup-restore" subcomp="manager" username="admin"] Cluster backup failed with ; BackupAsyncStatus [BackupStatus [status=AUTH_FAILURE, statusDetail=Cannot connect to sftp server. The remote server returned error: status: 255   out: '#015#012Your account has expired; please contact your system administrator.

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware NSX

Cause

The local user account configured on the NSX to connect to remote SFTP server has expired.

Resolution

Renew the password or unlock the expired user account leveraged for the NSX backups.