VCF Management Services Deployment Fails with Error VCFMS-BOOTSTRAP-999 (VMware Cloud Foundation)

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

When you attempt to deploy VCF 9.1 Management Services via API, the "Bootstrap VCF Services Platform" task fails during the validation phase. You observe the following error in the SDDC Manager UI or VCF Operations:

Bootstrap failed during stage 'INIT0001 - Validating configuration': IP #### is already in use (pingable). All IPs in the pool must be free. Please retry the operation or contact support if the issue persists. [VCFMS-BOOTSTRAP-999]

Environment

VCF 9.x 

Cause

This issue occurs when an IP address within the designated VCF Management Services IP pool is already active on the network. VCF requires all IP addresses in the pool to be unoccupied (non-pingable) during the pre-deployment validation to ensure they can be successfully assigned to the new Management Services cluster. Common causes include:

Another network device or virtual machine is statically assigned an IP from the pool.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must ensure the conflicting IP address is vacant before retrying the deployment:

1. Identify the conflicting IP address from the error message or the SDDC Manager debug logs.
2. Locate the device or service (such as an AVI Service Engine) currently utilizing that IP address.
3. Decommission, shut down, or re-assign the IP of the conflicting device to free the address.
4. From the SDDC Manager console, verify the IP is no longer pingable: ping ####
5. Once the IP is free, retry the VCF Management Services deployment task.