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Quick Tip - vSphere Supervisor fails to complete due to vSAN Health Check Alerts

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I just re-deployed my VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0.1 lab setup this evening, and after configuring configuring VCF Networking with VPC, I proceeded with vSphere Supervisor enablement using VPC. I had exported my previous vSphere Supervisor configuration to JSON, so the enablement should have been a no-op but as it was about to complete, I noticed there was this "Apply Solution" vCenter Server task that just kept failing with the following error message:

A general system error occurred: Health Check for 'esx03.vcf.lab' failed


I was really baffled by the error message and what health check was failing!?! I did know the Apply Solution typically would involve EAM (ESX Agent Manager), but I did not see anything out of the blue and I was in the process of filing an internal bug.

While I was waiting for the support bundles to generate and download, I figured I try searching for the keywords in our internal Google Chat in case someone had ran into error before. While there were few matches, there were no follow-ups or resolution. I was about to give up and then I saw a comment from Maher AlAsfar mentioning that if you use vSAN, make sure to silence all vSAN alerts as that is being checked by vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) as part of its healh check compliance!

Sure enough, I had two vSAN Health Check Alerts!


Once I silenced the vSAN alerts, the Apply Solution task completed immediately, and about a minute later, the vSphere Supervisor enablement also finished.

Quick Tip - Configuring vSphere Supervisor Services with self-signed container registry

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When deploying additional vSphere Supervisor Services including the new Data Services Operator enabling Database-as-a-Service (DBaaS), the container images that are used are hosted on Broadcom's container registry (projects.packages.broadcom.com).

For air-gapped deployments where you need to use an internal container registry, there is a process to relocate the Broadcom's container images into your own container registry, which has been possible since vSphere 8.0 Update 3.

While attempting to install the DSM Operator Supervisor Service, which had already been relocated into my standalone Harbor registry, I ran into the classic issue where the self-signed TLS certificate could not be trusted as you can see from the screenshot below.


While the validation error message was clear on why the installation will fail, it did not provide any details on how to actually add the trust the self-signed TLS certificate from my container registry.

After checking internally with a few folks, I was able to resolve this, but it took several attempts. I have already made a request to improve the official documentation to make these steps clearer.

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MS-A2 VCF 9.0 Lab: Configuring vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS)

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This post is part of a short series that builds on our minimal VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 deployment (2x Minisforum MS-A2) and showcases how to fully leverage the exciting new capabilities in the VCF 9 platform, all while maintaining a minimal resource footprint, which is ideal for lab and learning purposes.

In this blog post, we will explore one of the foundational vSphere Supervisor services called vSphere Kubernetes Service (VKS), enabling administrators to easily deploy, manage and lifecycle conformant Kubernetes Clusters at scale for their development and platform teams. VKS can be consumed through vCenter Server for single IT organizations, as well as through VCF Automation for organizations that require strong multi-tenancy, including cloud service providers.


Here are some additional VKS Resources that might be of interests if you would like to learn more:

Requirements:

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