PowerFlex 4.X - PFxM UI Not Accessible After PFMP Deployment

Not able to reach the PFxM UI after a successful PFMP deployment.

PFMP installer node reports no errors during installation.

K8s cluster is healthy, no crashing pods.

PFMP nodes may contain one or more unconfigured network interfaces:

pfmp01:~ # ip a | awk '/^[0-9]+:/ {if ($2 ~ /^eth/) print ""; print " " $2} /inet / {print " " $2} /link\// {print " " $2}' | egrep -iv 'cal|ee:ee:ee|00:00:00|lo:|127.0.0.1'
eth3:
00:50:xx:xx:xx:9b
 
eth0:
00:50:xx:xx:xx:d2
10.xx.xx.50/24
 
eth1:
00:50:xx:xx:xx:a1
 
eth2:
00:50:xx:xx:xx:8c

Notice that only eth0 is configured with an IP address.

The arping command performed from the installer node to the PFMP ingress IP:

installerNode:~ # arping -I eth0 10.10.10.60
ARPING 10.10.10.60 from 10.10.10.50 eth0
Unicast reply from 10.xx.xx.60 [00:50:xx:xx:xx:D2]  1.218ms
Unicast reply from 10.xx.xx.60 [00:50:xx:xx:xx:8C]  1.259ms
Unicast reply from 10.xx.xx.60 [00:50:xx:xx:xx:9B]  1.271ms
Unicast reply from 10.xx.xx.60 [00:50:xx:xx:xx:A1]  1.281ms
Unicast reply from 10.xx.xx.60 [00:50:xx:xx:xx:A1]  1.190ms
Unicast reply from 10.xx.xx.60 [00:50:xx:xx:xx:A1]  1.251ms

There should only be one MAC address returned. In this case, it should only be returning the MAC address of 00:50:xx:xx:xx:d2 as it is the only configured network interface on the PFMP server. 
In this case, all configured and unconfigured network interfaces are responding with their MAC addresses.

Impact

Unable to access the PFxM UI.

The Metallb load balancer pod monitors all network interfaces on a PFMP node for ARP requests associated with the load balancer IPs it manages. When an ARP request arrives from a remote server, the Metallb load balancer pod can choose any of the configured or unconfigured interfaces to act as the load-balancing interface. In the provided example from the snippet above, it is evident that the Metallb load balancer has selected the MAC address 00:50:xx:xx:xx:A1 associated with the network interface eth1. When attempting to access PFxM using the UI from a different server, this access fails because the traffic is being directed to eth1 on the PFMP server, which is not configured with an IP address.

Deactivate or disable any network interfaces that are not in use on all three PFMP servers.

For PFMP servers running as VMware virtual machines, it is recommended to remove the unused network interfaces from the VM configuration entirely.

For physical PFMP servers, you can disable the interfaces. Ensure that these network interfaces are prevented from starting up during system boot.

It may take 15-30 minutes after disabling the network interfaces before the UI will be reachable.

Impacted Versions

PowerFlex 4.x

Fixed In Version

N/A - Working As Designed