VCF 9.1 Brownfield Deployment Fails at "Create Transport Node Collections" with NSX Configuration Error

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

When deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 using the brownfield convergence workflow (e.g., using NVMe/RDMA storage), the deployment fails during the "Deploy and Configure NSX" workflow at the Create Transport Node Collections task.

Error: The task fails with the following error in the Domain Manager logs:

ERROR [vcf_dm] [c.v.e.s.o.model.error.ErrorFactory] [GRD6F2] NSX_TNC_CONFIG_ERROR_GENERIC Error in configuring transport node collections com.vmware.evo.sddc.orchestrator.exceptions.OrchTaskException: Error in configuring transport node collections

The log further indicates:

Transport Node Collection doesn't exist for cluster : [cluster_moid] Sub cluster input (...) for VCP cluster [cluster_moid] is not defined. Setting value to null

and

ERROR [vcf_dm,0000000000000000,0000] [c.v.v.c.f.p.n.p.a.CreateOverlayAndVlanBackedTransportNodeCollectionAction,dm-exec-XXX]  VCP draft creation/apply failed for cluster SFX-MGMT (MoId: domain-cXX) com.vmware.evo.sddc.orchestrator.exceptions.OrchTaskException: Failed to create or apply VCP draft for the cluster domain-cXX java.lang.Exception: Draft configuration Precheck task failed or skipped on 'host1.subdomain.domain, host2.subdomain.domain, host3.subdomain.domain'.

 

Environment

VCF 9.1

Cause

This issue typically occurs when the configuration specification (configspec) is empty during the Transport Node Collection creation. It often arises in non-standard deployment designs, such as greenfield environments converged via the brownfield workflow to accommodate specific hardware requirements (e.g., dedicated vDS for NSX Overlay traffic with MTU 9000, while the management network is limited to MTU 1500).

Resolution

The most effective workaround involves manually ensuring the host configuration is correctly propagated to the cluster before the NSX configuration task runs:

1. Verify that all ESXi hosts are successfully added to vCenter and the SDDC Manager inventory.
2. Ensure that the cluster image is correctly applied and compliant.
3. If the deployment continues to fail at the "Create Transport Node Collections" task, manually refresh the host configuration:
   • Manually pull the image/configuration from a known healthy host within the cluster.
   • Apply this configuration to the affected cluster.
4. Once the host configuration is correctly synchronized, retry the NSX deployment task from the SDDC Manager.

Additional Information

This error is specifically related to the automated logic conflict during TNC creation when standard management VMKernel networking requirements for NSX Overlay are disabled.