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JayArr
Contributor
Contributor

Rebuilt vSphere host - can't add it back to a dvSwitch

I had installed the Cisco 1000v on our vSphere enterprise cluster of three hosts. We had some difficulty in implementation and the project window was closing fast so we decided to shelve it until the end of our school's summer semester when we would have more liberty with brief downtime.

In the mean time we installed a dvSwitch for all the servers and configured multiple port groups to allow us to provision servers on different VLANs easily. A very nice feature and makes configuration dead simple.

Fast forward to U2. Our first host (Host #3) upgraded with nare a problem. Update 2 installed without an issue, rebooted cleanly, and joined the cluster.

Host #2 wouldn't upgrade -VUM continued to fail the update process due to conflicts with VEM patches. After a call to vmware support, I got assistance in how to retry each update process while removing conflicts. Finally got the update to start which the failed after 30% through the process. I tried a reboot of the host - but it never came back up.A quick check of the iLO console showed what I had dreaded - grub lost its boot file. I remember this happening to folks during U1 and decided to cut my losses and pave the host - using the .iso and reinstall.

Now the host is back up and happily talking to vCenter again. However, I can't get vCenter to add the host back into the dvSwitch. The "Add Hosts" window is empty, vCenter thinks that Host #2 is part of the dvSwitch but Host #2's nics don't show up, and an when I try to refresh the switch I get this error:

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Reconfigure vNetwork Distributed Switch

Cannot complete a Distributed Virtual Switch operation for one or more host members.

DVS operation failed on host esx4-02.domainremoved.edu, The object or item referred to could not be found. got (vim.fault.NotFound) exception

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As this is a new cluster with lots of spare resources, I can leave this host in maintenance mode for the weekend while I sort this out. The only option I can think of right now is tear down the existing dvSwitch and build up a new one. This introduces a few other problems.

  1. I don't have a maintenance window to take any of the servers offline during the day - so I'll end up doing this at night.

  2. If I have the same problems updating Host #1 - I'll be doing this all over again.

Question: How can I add a rebuilt vSphere host to the dvSwitch?

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