Before deploying a new VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 environment, the VCF Installer performs a number of validations including network MTU. The minimum MTU that is required to deploy VCF is 1600, which is used for the Tunnel Endpoint (TEP) for NSX traffic between your ESX hosts.

For most environments, this is not an issue and users will typically deploy VCF with Jumbo Frames enabled and configure the MTU with value of 9000. If your environment does not meet the minimum MTU requirement, the VCF Installer will flag this as an error and prevent you from deploying as shown in the screenshot below.

If you can not meet the MTU requirement, you can bypass the validation check so that you can continue with your deployment of the VCF Management Domain.

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As I continue my VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.2 upgrade journey, I have now reached the core SDDC components, including vCenter, NSX, and ESX.

NSX Manager and NSX Edges was up first and before the upgrade begins, a pre-check is performed. I was not expecting any issues but to my surprise, I ran into the following validation error:

DNS is not configured on edge 83ea6662-41b2-48aa-a8d0-22039d3230c0. Edge will not be able to resolve the fqdn to download the upgrade bundle from NSX manager. Kindly configure a valid DNS on edge.. Other components that failed with the same error: edge01b, edge01a

We all know how important DNS is and ensuring it is configured correctly, both forward and reverse lookups.

However, I like to think that I am pretty good about ensuring everything in my lab is setup with DNS and this honestly was a surprising error, that BOTH NSX Edges do NOT have DNS configured!?! 🤔

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If you are using an AMD Ryzen (Consumer) CPU for your VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) lab environment, you have most likely have applied one of the required workarounds for either installing an NSX Edge (HERE) or upgrading an NSX Edge (HERE).

For those planning to install or upgrade to the latest VCF 9.0.2 patch release, which was just released today, you may come across this issue as shown in the screenshot below when attempting an NSX Edge upgrade.

While I have yet to run through the VCF 9.0.2 upgrade myself, a similar configuration file tweak from within the NSX Edge VM will be required. A colleague recently shared a more optimal trick for bypassing the non-supported AMD processor check, which would be simpler to implement for lab environments.

Disclaimer: This is not officially supported by Broadcom, please use at your own risk.

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