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Quick Tip - NSX Edge fails DNS pre-check as part of VCF 9.0.2 Upgrade

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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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Improved Workaround for NSX Edge Deployment & Upgrade to VCF 9.0.2 running AMD Ryzen CPUs

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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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Increasing VCF Installer & SDDC Manager Timeout for NSX Deployment

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For resource constrained environments, deploying VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) can take longer, especially when deploying on top of a Nested ESXi configuration. However, the VCF Installer does provide a robust retry function that typically will resolve most intermediate issues.

With that said, for environments that are more resource constrained, you may notice the NSX Manager component fails to complete its initialization within the default timeout period. Users can increase the timeout by adding nsxt.manager.wait.minutes to increase the time out (minutes) that VCF Installer / SDDC Manager will wait for NSX to be ready.

echo "nsxt.manager.wait.minutes=180" >> /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application-prod.properties
echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

Note: SDDC Manager is responsible for deploying NSX, so the setting above should be applied to SDDC Manager. The default behavior of the VCF Installer is to switch to the SDDC Manager function, which means the setting above is actually applied to the VCF Installer unless you are overriding this behavior within the JSON deployment file.

If you need to increase the timeout for the NSX Edge Deployment, users can add edge.node.vm.creation.max.wait.minutes to increase the time out (minutes) that VCF Installer / SDDC Manager will wait for the NSX Edge to be ready.

echo "edge.node.vm.creation.max.wait.minutes=90" >> /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application-prod.properties
echo 'y' | /opt/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/scripts/cli/sddcmanager_restart_services.sh

Note: Settings above are applicable for both VCF 5.x and VCF 9.x

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