NSX Back-in-Time Error during Upgrade - VCF 9.x

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) upgrade pre-checks fail when the environment contains a chronologically newer NSX build than the version bundled in the target VCF 9.x release. This prevents the upgrade from proceeding even though the target major version is higher.

 

The SDDC Manager pre-check or upgrade task fails with the following error: 

Not all products versions can be upgrade. NSX Managers with non-upgradable version 4.2.4.0.0-25410638.

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation 5.2.2
• VMware NSX 4.2.4.0 (Build 25410638)
• Target Version: VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1.0.0

Cause

A "Back-in-Time" upgrade restriction exists within the VCF lifecycle management logic. This design safeguard prevents upgrading a software component to a build that is chronologically older than the currently installed version. Because NSX 4.2.4.0 was released after the VCF 9.1.0.0 software baseline was established, the upgrade path is blocked to prevent potential regressions.

Resolution

Perform the following steps to re-align the environment versioning:

1. Un-prepare the NSX clusters and removing the Compute Manager.
2. Use the SDDC Manager API to remove the Workload Domain and associated host entries from the inventory.
3. Perform a fresh re-import of the domain into the VCF 9.1 metadata to bypass the upgrade chronological block.

 

Subscribe to this article to be updated on fix status: KB 275360

Additional Information

For detailed steps on performing a brownfield import, refer to VCF 9.1 Administration Guide