SimpliVity 5.3.1 Deployment Issue: Stuck at Step 17 of 43

Yesterday, one of our colleagues encountered a recurring issue during the deployment of an HPE SimpliVity environment. The deployment consistently failed at Step 17 of 43 in the Deployment Manager, displaying the following error:

ERROR : Step 17 of 43: A task error occurred while adding the host NIC(s) to the port group – active [‘vmnic3’] and standby [] to port group “SVT_StorPG” on vSwitch “vSwitch1” – error: Type: ‘com.vmware.vim25.InvalidArgument’ Detail: ‘null’ Cause: ‘null’ FaultCause: ‘null’ FaultMessage [].

Upon remote connection and inspection of the setup and error logs, it became clear that everything else in the configuration was correct:

• Network mapping and configurations were as expected
• The correct vmnic adapters were selected for the back-to-back connection
• The ports were changed and verified, but results were the same.

Despite the correct configurations, SimpliVity Deployment Manager failed to attach the selected vmnic to vSwitch1. As a result, the system couldn’t create the required Storage and Federation networks for the back-to-back connection.

When inspecting the affected hosts via vCenter, it was evident that:

vSwitch1 was created, but no NICs were assigned to it.
This leaves the vSwitch1 completely unlinked to any physical uplink adapters.

This appears to be a bug in SimpliVity version 5.3.1, where the Deployment Manager fails to automatically claim the NICs despite user selections.

Follow these steps to manually assign the physical NICs to vSwitch1:

1. Open vCenter
2. Navigate to Host > Configure > Networking
3. Expand Standard Switch: vSwitch1
4. Click “Manage Physical Adapters”
5. From the list of Unclaimed adapters, select the correct vmnic (as intended for back-to-back use)
6. Click “Move Down” to make it active
7. Click OK
8. Repeat the same process for each host affected

Once both hosts have their NICs manually added to vSwitch1:

• Return to the SimpliVity Deployment Manager
• Click Retry

At this point, the deployment should proceed past Step 17 without further issues.

Wishing you a successful day!

Best regards,
Hasan