Error: Failed to download the manifest from plugin/manifests-version.zip during vCenter import (VCF)

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer
• VMware Cloud Foundation

Issue/Introduction

• The VCF Operations UI displays below banner when attempting to import an existing vCenter Server into the VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) inventory

  Service or view is not available for the selected object.
  Details: Failed to download the manifest from https://<sddcmanagerfqdn>:443/plugin/manifests-version.zip.
  Next steps:
  Test the connectivity to the manifest URL from the VCF Operations.

• Manual verification using wget from the VCF Operations appliance to the specified URL succeeds, indicating that network connectivity and firewall rules are not the cause of the failure.

  wget -- no-check-certificate https://<sddcmanagerfqdn>/plugin/manifests-9.0.2.0.25151286.zip

  
  
  

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the internal services responsible for managing inventory import tasks enter an unresponsive or stale state. While the appliance has network reachability, the specific service thread handling the manifest download is unable to initialize or complete the request.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, restart the SDDC Manager services on the appliance to flush the service state and re-initialize the import task handler.

1. Log in to the SDDC Manager appliance as root via SSH.
2. Execute the service restart script:
    

   /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

3. Wait for all services to return to a "Running" state.
4. Retry the vCenter import task from the VCF Operations UI.