VCF SDDC Manager reporting NSX account audit as Disconnected

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

• The NSX 4.x audit user password is reported as expired or needs to be changed.
• The SDDC Manager UI reflects a "Disconnected" status for the NSX-T Manager cluster audit user account.
• The NSX-T Manager UI flags the audit user account status as expired (PASSWORD_EXPIRED).
• After successfully changing the password via the set user audit password command as admin user, the system reverts to the old password or an "expired" state after approximately one minute.
• Manual password remediation attempts within the SDDC Manager UI fail despite successful CLI updates.

Environment

• VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 4.x, 5.x
• VMware NSX 4.x

Cause

This issue is caused by a synchronization conflict within the NSX Manager cluster. When a password is changed on a single node while management API services are active, the existing stale credentials stored on peer nodes may overwrite the local change during the next synchronization cycle. Additionally, standard local password modifications executed under the admin CLI context on a single node do not persist across the SDDC Manager inventory vault.

Resolution

 

• To ensure the password change propagates correctly to the entire cluster and synchronizes with SDDC Manager, perform a manual reset via CLI with root access and service isolation:

1. Retrieve the existing user password stored within the SDDC Manager database/vault if remediating through VCF.

2. Log in to the NSX Manager appliance as root via SSH - this must be run as root user, not admin user.

3. Stop the Management Plane API service to prevent peer-node overwrites:
   /etc/init.d/nsx-mp-api-server stop

4. Reset the local user password (replace [username] with the affected user, e.g., audit):
   passwd [username]

5. Create the synchronization trigger flag:
   touch /var/vmware/nsx/reset_cluster_credentials

6. Restart the API service:
   /etc/init.d/nsx-mp-api-server start

7. Return to the SDDC Manager UI and perform the password remediation workflow for the affected account.

Additional Information

For more information on resetting the passwords of NSX Manager and NSX Edge, refer to the Technical Documentation