ESXi Upgrade via Fleet Management Fails with Metadata Download Error

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) upgrade for ESXi hosts from 9.0.1 to 9.0.2 fails during the "Downloading ESX metadata" task within Fleet Management.

Symptoms:

• SDDC Manager UI displays "Downloading ESX metadata" with a status of FAILED.
• Attempts to trigger the upgrade or pre-check fail immediately.
• Log entries in /var/log/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm.log indicate connection timeouts or 404 errors when attempting to reach the bundle repository.

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation 9.0.x

Cause

The SDDC Manager is unable to access the required offline depot files because a dedicated web server has not been configured,
or the SDDC Manager is incorrectly attempting to utilize itself as a depot server via HTTP/HTTPS.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must deploy and configure a dedicated VCF Offline Depot server. Follow these steps:

1. Deploy a Web Server VM: Provision a Linux-based VM (e.g., Photon OS, Ubuntu) to host the depot files.
2. Install Web Services: Install and configure a web server such as Apache or Nginx.
3. Download Bundles: Use the VCF Bundle Transfer Utility (BTU) on an internet-connected machine to download the required 9.0.2 ESXi bundles.
4. Populate Depot: Transfer the downloaded bundles and metadata to the /var/www/html/ (or equivalent) directory on your dedicated depot server.
5. Configure SDDC Manager: * Navigate to Administration > Settings > External Beacon in the SDDC Manager.
• Update the Depot URL to point to your new dedicated server (e.g., https://<Depot_VM_IP>/vcf/depot).
6. Retry Upgrade: Restart the ESXi upgrade task from the Fleet Management dashboard.

Additional Information

• VCF Offline Depot deployment (Broadcom KB 312168)
• Set Up an Offline Depot Web Server for VCF 9.0