Error "Failed to discovery domain inventory with vCenter" when upgrading or converging vSphere with NSX to VCF 9.1

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

• The VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 convergence or upgrade workflow fails during the domain discovery phase with the following error in the VCF Installer UI: Failed to discovery domain inventory with vCenter

• The following error entries were observed in /var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/domainmanager.log of VCF Installer:
  
  

  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS DEBUG [vcf_dm,######################,dffc] [c.v.v.d.u.DomainDiscoveryVdsHelper,dm-exec-####]  Get transport type for port group vlan####
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS DEBUG [vcf_dm,######################,dffc] [c.v.v.d.u.DomainDiscoveryVdsHelper,dm-exec-####]  About to check if vlan#### is type VM_MANAGEMENT
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS DEBUG [vcf_dm,######################,dffc] [c.v.v.d.u.DomainDiscoveryVdsHelper,dm-exec-####]  Discovered transport types for portgroup dvportgroup-#### are [VM_MANAGEMENT]
  ::::::::::::::::::::::
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS ERROR [vcf_dm,############,dffc] [c.v.v.d.u.DomainDiscoveryVdsHelper,dm-exec-####]  Failed to process VDS vDS## in vCenter VC_FQDN
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS ERROR [vcf_dm,############,dffc] [c.v.v.d.utils.DomainDiscoveryUtil,dm-exec-####]  Domain discovery failed for vCenter VC_FQDN:Could not discover VDS vDS# in vCenter VC_FQDN due to failure in processing: null

   

• To verify the Active Uplinks configuration via the vCenter Managed Object Browser (MOB):

1. 1. Navigate to the specific port group's uplink teaming policy page:
https://VC_FQDN/mob/?moid=dvportgroup-####&doPath=config.defaultPortConfig.uplinkTeamingPolicy.uplinkPortOrder

   2. Inspect the activeUplinkPort property. In a failing scenario, this list will be empty or unset.

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1
vCenter Server 8.x 

Cause

This failure occurs when a Distributed Virtual Portgroup lacks active uplinks typically because they are set to standby, marked as unused, or left completely unassigned.

When the VCF discovery engine encounters an empty active adapter list in the teaming policy, the automation throws a NullPointerException because it cannot retrieve a populated uplink array.

Resolution

Manually assign uplinks to the affected Distributed Portgroup(s):

1. Log in to the vSphere Client for the target vCenter.
2. Navigate to Networking and select the Distributed Virtual Switch identified in the logs.
3. Select the failing Distributed Portgroup and click Edit Settings.
4. Click Teaming and failover.
5. Under Uplink order, move the desired adapters from Unused or Standby to the Active adapters category.
6. Click OK.
7. To verify the change, browse to the Managed Object Browser (MOB):
   1. https://[VC_FQDN]/mob/?moid=[PORTGROUP_ID]&doPath=config.defaultPortConfig.uplinkTeamingPolicy.uplinkPortOrder
8. Confirm the activeUplinkPort property is no longer empty.
9. Restart the workflow from the VCF Installer UI.