Deploying vSphere-HAProxy appliance failed to get its IP address on or after vSphere 8.0U3b

Products

• VMware vSphere with Tanzu

Issue/Introduction

Without the changes described in this document, the HAProxy appliance will power on, but never receive an IP address. 

Environment

Issue will happen in vSphere 8.0U3b and onward.

Cause

There was a change to the default behavior of cloud-init guestInfo variables that results in the HAProxy appliance from https://github.com/haproxytech/vmware-haproxy being unable to configure its networking at boot. 

The vmware.log file for the haproxy vm located in /vmfs/volumes/<datastore_name>/<haproxy_vm_name/vmware.log will include one or more of the following lines indicating that issue is occuring. 

2024-09-13T19:10:24.512Z In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.metadata
2024-09-13T19:10:24.512Z In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.userdata
2024-09-13T19:10:24.512Z In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.vendordata
2024-09-13T19:10:24.512Z In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.metadata.encoding 
2024-09-13T19:10:24.512Z In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.userdata.encoding
2024-09-13T19:10:24.512Z In(05) vmx - GuestRpc: Permission denied for setting key guestinfo.vendordata.encoding

Resolution

Add the configuration settings to the deployed appliance.

1. Deploying the appliance in a powered off state
2. Editing the deployed VM and adding the following key/value pair under the "Advanced Options" tab 

guest_rpc.auth.cloud-init.set=FALSE

3. Save the changes to the VM and power on the appliance.

The appliance should power on and receive its configured IP address.