vSphere Supervisor Enablement Fails: Timed out waiting for ifaces to come up

Products

• VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service

Issue/Introduction

• During the enablement of a vSphere Supervisor Cluster in a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or standard vSphere environment, the operation fails and times out.
• In the vCenter Server UI, the task fails during the "Configured Supervisor Control plane VM's Workload Network" step with an error similar to the following:

Configuration error (since <PID>, <PID>) System error occurred on Master node with identifier <HOSTNAMES>. Details: Failed to reconcile ifaces network setting. Details Timed out waiting for ifaces to come up..

• When logging into the console of the affected Supervisor Control Plane VM, running the networkctl command reveals that the eth1 (Workload) interface is in a degraded and configuring state, while eth0 (Management) is fully configured:

IDX LINK TYPE     OPERATIONAL SETUP     
  1 lo   loopback carrier     unmanaged 
  2 eth0 ether    routable    configured
  3 eth1 ether    degraded    configuring

• Checking the network configuration file for eth1 confirms that the interface is configured to request an IP via DHCP (DHCP = yes):

root@<HOSTNAME> [ ~ ]# cat /etc/systemd/network/10-eth1.network
[Match]
Name = eth1
[Network]
IPv6AcceptRA = no
DHCP = yes
DNS = <IPS>
Domains = ~cluster.local
[DHCP]
UseHostname = false
UseRoutes = false
UseGateway = false
...

Environment

VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service

Cause

The Supervisor VM's Workload Network interface (eth1) is failing to acquire an IP address from the environment's DHCP server. The cluster enablement process requires the Workload interface to successfully pull a DHCP lease before it can proceed. Because the interface is stuck in a configuring state indefinitely waiting for a DHCP response, the overall enablement workflow times out and fails.

Resolution

Investigate and resolve the underlying DHCP communication or configuration problem on the Workload Network. Engage the network administration team to verify the following common misconfigurations:

1. DHCP Relay Configuration: Ensure that the gateway or router servicing the Workload Network segment (such as an NSX Tier-1/Tier-0 Gateway) has a properly configured DHCP Relay pointing to the correct external DHCP server IP addresses.

2. IP Pool/Scope Exhaustion: Verify that the DHCP server has an active scope for the Workload Network subnet and possesses available (unleased) IP addresses.

3. Network Firewalls: Confirm that no physical or virtual firewalls are dropping DHCP traffic (UDP ports 67 and 68) between the Supervisor network and the DHCP server.

4. MAC Filtering/Policies: Ensure the DHCP server is not configured with strict MAC filtering or policies that would reject requests from the Supervisor VMs.

5. Once the DHCP issue is resolved and the eth1 interface successfully acquires an IP address, navigate back to Workload Management in the vCenter Server UI and retry the cluster enablement process.