Supervisor Cluster Deployment Stalls at 14 of 28 Tasks Due to Missing NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi) Static IP Pool

Products

• VMware vSphere Kubernetes Service

Issue/Introduction

During Supervisor Cluster deployment, the configuration workflow halts at exactly 14 of 28 tasks. The underlying ESXi hosts fail to transition to a Ready state, preventing successful cluster initialization.

Symptoms:

• Supervisor cluster deployment progress stalls at 14 of 28 tasks completed.

• ESXi hosts designated as Kubernetes worker nodes remain in a NotReady state.

• The "Control Plane Node Address" in vCenter Server incorrectly displays the configured starting IP address instead of a valid Virtual IP (VIP) allocated by the load balancer.

• Avi Controller logs and UI indicate the Supervisor control plane authenticates successfully (polling approximately every 5 minutes) but disconnects without instantiating Virtual Service (VS), Virtual IP (VIP), or POOL objects for the kubectl and CSI load balancers.

Environment

 

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

• VMware vCenter Server 7.x / 8.x

• NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi)

 

Cause

A static IP pool has not been configured for the VIP and Service Engines (SEs) within the designated VIP network in the NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi) infrastructure. During the control plane initialization phase, the Supervisor cluster requires a valid VIP to establish the control plane endpoint. Because the static IP pool is missing or unconfigured, Avi cannot allocate the requested IPs to instantiate the necessary VS, VIP, and POOL objects, halting the WCP configuration workflow.

Resolution

1. Access the NSX Advanced Load Balancer (Avi) Controller UI.

2. Navigate to Infrastructure > Networks and select the designated VIP network.

3. Edit the network to configure a Static IP Pool containing sufficient available, unallocated IP addresses for both the VIPs and the Service Engines.

4. Navigate to Infrastructure > Clouds and validate that the IPAM and DNS profile configurations associated with the vCenter cloud are correctly mapped to the updated network.

5. Monitor the Workload Management interface in the vCenter Server UI. The Supervisor cluster deployment workflow incorporates a reconciliation loop and will automatically retry the VIP allocation.

6. Verify the "Control Plane Node Address" in vCenter Server updates from the starting IP address to a valid Avi-allocated VIP.

7. Validate within the Avi Controller UI that the kubectl and CSI VS, VIP, and POOL objects are successfully instantiated.

8. Confirm the ESXi hosts successfully transition to a Ready state via the Supervisor cluster context executing kubectl get nodes.

Additional Information

If the deployment does not automatically resume within 15 minutes of configuring the Avi static IP pool, verify bidirectional network connectivity over TCP 443 between the vCenter Server, the Supervisor control plane VMs (management interface), and the Avi Controller cluster.