Deployment of NSX Manager appliance from NSX UI is stuck at 1% Deploying

Products

• VMware NSX
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• You are deploying a new NSX Manager appliance from the NSX UI.
• The deployment status is stuck on: 1% Deploying
• The corresponding createVm task in vCenter remains stuck at 0% for more than 20 minutes.
• The task eventually jumps from 0% directly to 100%.

Environment

VMware NSX
VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

The NSX Manager large appliance requires approximately 400 GB of disk space across three virtual disks. The "stuck" behavior occurs during the disk creation phase due to the following factors:

1. Sequential Zero-Filling: When deploying to a datastore that does not support VAAI Block Zero (such as certain local RAID controllers or older storage arrays), ESXi must manually zero-fill all 400 GB of disk space.
2. UI Progress Limitation: The vCenter createVm task does not report incremental progress during the disk zeroing phase. It will remain at 0% until all 400 GB are written, making the deployment appear hung even though it is actively progressing.

Resolution

Allow Sufficient Time: If your storage does not support VAAI, the task may take 30–45 minutes to finish. Do not cancel the task unless it has exceeded one hour without progress in the ESXi hostd.log.

Use VAAI-Supported Storage: Deploy the NSX Manager on a datastore that supports Hardware Accelerated Move/Zero. This offloads the zeroing to the storage firmware, reducing the creation time to seconds.

Workaround:

If the task is genuinely stuck or you need to re-trigger the deployment:

• Cancel the vCenter task if stuck at 0%.
• SSH the existing NSX Manager appliance.
• As admin:
  
  • Restart the manager service:

    restart service manager

• Or as root:
  
  • Restart the proton service:

    service proton restart

• A new vCenter task should be triggered.
• If no new vCenter task is created within a few minutes and a second NSX Manager appliance is already deployed, restart the service on the second appliance.