During the bring-up of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.0 with the VCF installer, in the validation phase, you may encounter errors related to retrieving the compatibility matrix for VCF components. This issue occurs when using an online depot on the VCF installer to download the binaries required for VCF bring-up. First, ensure the VCF installer can download the vLCM compatibility data bundle from Broadcom’s VVS endpoint at vvs.broadcom.com. In our case, the VCF Installer can access the required URLs, but we still got the errors! Keep reading if you are in the same situation.

You can use a workaround on the VCF installer to solve this issue and continue the VCF bring-up.

So the errors on the validation and compatibility look like the above picture and the texts below:

Versions and Bundles
Failed to retrieve compatibility matrix for component VMware Cloud Foundation Operations with version 9.0.0.0.24695812
Failed to retrieve compatibility matrix for component VMware Cloud Foundation Operations fleet management with version 9.0.0.0.24695816
Failed to retrieve compatibility matrix for component VMware vCenter with version 9.0.0.0.24755230
Failed to retrieve compatibility matrix for component SDDC Manager with version 9.0.0.0.24703748
Failed to retrieve compatibility matrix for component VMware NSX with version 9.0.0.0.24733063

And a failure in validating the ESX Host Configuration

ESX Host Configuration
Validate ESX Host version and build failed

To resolve this issue, we need to modify two compatibility and validation keys that cause these errors and restart the respective services, allowing the changes to take effect.

Connect to the VCF installer through SSH and log in with the vcf user account. Then run SU command to elevate the privilege of the current user and run the following commands.

First, you need to change the Compatibility Controls Check in the compatibility.flag file.

echo "vcf.compatibility.controllers.compatibilityCheckEnabled=false" >> /opt/vmware/vcf/lcm/lcm-app/conf/compatibility.flag

Then, restart the LCM service so that the change takes effect.

systemctl restart lcm

For the second part of this workaround, you need to modify another validation for interoperability of the VCF domain manager in the application-prod.properties file.

echo "vcf.domainmanager.validation.enableVvsInteropValidation=false" >> /etc/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/application-prod.properties

Then, restart the Domain Manager service so that the change takes effect.

systemctl restart domainmanager.service

Now, if you rerun the validation, both Versions and Bundles and ESX Host Configuration should pass successfully. If this article helps you solve the issue, please leave a comment on this blog post!