PowerFlex 4.X: Deployment fails when VCenter is upgraded Manually

Summary: In some situations where a vCenter is upgraded to a higher version, outside of the RCM or IC being deployed, in the middle of an ongoing Compute Only Resource Group deployment, the deployment job may fail due to an inability to add vmnics onto the Front-End Distributed Virtual Switch (DVS). PowerFlex Manager (PFxM) can add the vmnics to the Back-End production DVS without any issues in this situation. ...

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Symptoms

Compute Only deployment cannot complete due to PFxM being unable to add vmnics to the FE production DVS. In the vcenter.out log in the PFxM deployment logs, the user sees entries similar to:

Debug: Found dvswitch: VmwareDistributedVirtualSwitch 'US002-FE-PROD-01'
Debug: setting value at [:distributedVirtualPort, :portgroupKey]
Debug: adding empty hash at [:distributedVirtualPort]
Notice: /Stage[main]/Asm::Resource_wrapper/Vcenter::Vmknic[us002nm5032.ol.olnet.extra:vmk0]/Esx_vmknic[us002nm5032.ol.olnet.extra:vmk0]/dvportgroupname: [distributedVirtualPort.portgroupKey] changed "" to "'V0678-FLEX-NODE-MGMT'"
Debug: setting value at [:distributedVirtualPort, :switchUuid]
Notice: /Stage[main]/Asm::Resource_wrapper/Vcenter::Vmknic[us002nm5032.ol.olnet.extra:vmk0]/Esx_vmknic[eus002nm5032.ol.olnet.extra:vmk0]/dvswitchname: [distributedVirtualPort.switchUuid] changed "" to "'US002-FE-PROD-01'"
Debug: requiring: [:dvportgroupname, :dvswitchname] were received
Debug: requiring: [:dvportgroupname, :dvswitchname] initially required
Debug: requiring: [:dvportgroupname, :dvswitchname] were received
Debug: node distributedVirtualPort: checking #"DistributedVirtualSwitchPortConnection", :path_should=>[:distributedVirtualPort], :misc=>#, :path_is_now=>[:distributedVirtualPort]}>
Debug: setting value at [:distributedVirtualPort]
Debug: node ip: checking #"HostIpConfig", :path_should=>[:ip], :misc=>#, :path_is_now=>[:ip]}>
Debug: node : checking #"HostVirtualNicSpec", :path_should=>[], :misc=>#, :path_is_now=>[]}>
Debug: 'object' is ##"dvportgroup-2035", :switchUuid=>"56 31 fa af b8 6a ed 45-9e cb ff 88 fd 5d db 1d"}>}>'}
Error: /Stage[main]/Asm::Resource_wrapper/Vcenter::Vmknic[us002nm5032.ol.olnet.extra:vmk0]/Esx_vmknic[us002nm5032.ol.olnet.extra:vmk0]: Could not evaluate: HostCommunication: An error occurred while communicating with the remote host.

Cause

This communication issue occurs because the PFxM is expecting to communicate with a lower version of vCenter. As a result of this it is not communicating with the higher version correctly.

Resolution

  • Add the vmnics to the FE DVS manually using the vSphere user interface.
  • Retry the failed job in PFxM.

Affected Products

PowerFlex Appliance, PowerFlex rack connectivity, PowerFlex Software
Article Properties
Article Number: 000234329
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 03 Jan 2026
Version:  2
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