Host unreachable from vCenter after VCF 9.1 upgrade on Dell PowerEdge R7425

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware Cloud Foundation
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

An ESXi host added to a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 environment becomes completely unreachable from vCenter following an upgrade. This issue occurs when a specific hardware addon removes essential network interface card (NIC) drivers during the update process

• The ESXi host status shows as 'Not Responding' or 'Unreachable' in the vCenter Server inventory.
• Management network connectivity is lost.
• NIC drivers are missing from the host after the upgrade

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1
• ESX 9.1
• vCenter Server 9.1

Cause

Applying the Dell 9100-A00 addon to an R7425 server during the upgrade process removes the NIC drivers. The unsupported addon forces a driver update that downgrades or removes drivers not compatible with the hardware, resulting in a loss of network connectivi

Resolution

Revert the host to the previous working image state to restore the NIC drivers and management connectivity.

1. Access the physical host console or Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC).
2. Reboot the ESXi host.
3. During the boot process, press Shift+R to enter the Recovery Mode.
4. Select the option to switch the boot bank to the previous version.
5. Confirm the selection to roll back the host to the state before the addon was applied.
6. Once the host reboots, verify that the NIC drivers are loaded and the host is reachable from vCenter.