ESXi Host Configuration Shows 0 of 28 Due to Spherelet VIB Installation Failure From LCM Communication Issues

Products

• VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service

Issue/Introduction

During Supervisor Cluster enablement or host reconciliation, host configuration progress remains stuck at 0 of 28. Communication failures between vCenter Lifecycle Manager (LCM/vLCM) and the target ESXi host prevent the installation of the Spherelet VIB.

Symptoms:

• Supervisor cluster configuration or host onboarding stalls at 0 of 28.

• Spherelet VIB is not installed or shows failed deployment in vCenter tasks.

• LCM/vLCM logs report communication timeouts or task execution errors when pushing VIB payloads to the ESXi host.

Environment

 

• vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS) / vSphere with Tanzu 7.x / 8.x

• VMware vCenter Server 7.x / 8.x

• VMware ESXi 7.x / 8.x

 

Cause

Stale host daemon states or hung LCM agent communication channels on one, or more, of the ESXi hosts in the cluster block vCenter from executing the VIB installation task, causing the host configuration sequence to halt at 0 of 28.

Resolution

1. Place the affected ESXi host into Maintenance Mode in vCenter.

2. Reboot the ESXi host to clear hung communication locks and reset the host management daemons (hostd / vpxa).

3. Once the host has rebooted, exit Maintenance Mode.

4. Re-trigger the Supervisor host configuration or vLCM cluster remediation task.

5. Verify the Spherelet VIB is installed via the ESXi CLI:

   esxcli software vib list | grep -i spherelet
   

6. Confirm the Spherelet service is active and running:

   /etc/init.d/spherelet status

Additional Information

If the Spherelet VIB fails to install following the host reboot, verify HTTPS (443) and Port 902 connectivity between vCenter/LCM and the ESXi management interface, and ensure no third-party VIB compliance blocks are present.