Adding Hosts to a cluster fails

[Hans Meiser]

Hello,

we have currently 2 hosts in VCenter which are not clustered yet, just running in a subfolder. On both hosts are VMs running.
We want to put them into a new cluster to use Features like NativeKeyProvider which is activated in VCenter. It seems that hosts only can use NativeKeyProvider when located in a cluster.

I created a simple Cluster, Features like DRS and HA are off. Now i wanted to put the first host into the cluster. I rightclick the host and use "Move To..."
After clicking OK i got the vacuous message "The operation is not supported on the object."

Where can i find the real reason why the operation was rejected? The logs on VCenter and Host are not very helpful.

Cluster and Hosts have same update-method with baselines. So this should not be the issue.

I need a log or something which shows exact reason. Do you have a hint for me? Please help.

Thanks,
Hans

[Alexandru Capras]

Hello,
Try putting the host into maintenance mode first, then move it into the cluster.

[Hans Meiser]

Hello,

we tried this a few minutes ago, unfortunately the error-message was the same.

Is a VMotion Kerneladapter mandatory? Currently this hosts have only Management Network.

Thank you,
Hans

[Alexandru Capras]

vMotion shouldn't be a prerequisite. Since you mentioned there are running VMs on both hosts, I assume you've enabled vMotion somehow... either by adding a VMkernel adapter or enabling the service on the management interface, right?

Do you have any more details from the task or events?
I found a similar case where the root cause was that the cluster was set up with the old baseline method, while the host was using the image-based update method. Check out this KB - might be useful:

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/373455/unable-to-move-esxi-host-to-a-cluster.html

Also, you could check for more clues in the logs:
vCenter: /var/log/vmware/vpxd/vpxd.log
ESXi Host: /var/log/hostd.log