Solved: HPE Hyper converged solution “SimpliVity” VMware Plug-in error: HPE SimpliVity Plug-in cannot complete the task because it cannot contact the Virtual Controller.

 For those who are running VMware vSphere 6.7 version, you may have run into the following error: HPE SimpliVity Plug-in cannot complete the task because it cannot contact the Virtual Controller. This due to the fact that the Simplivity Plug-in that allows us to manage the Nodes in vSphere has lost communication with the Omnistack virtual controllers.

Cause

A well knows bug that in HPE Simplivity 3.7.10 affecting the VMtools service is the root of the issue and it is triggered when the VMs are left in a running state on their associated ESXi nodes when the vCenter server is rebooted. This KB article nicely put by HPE describes in detail what has happened. It all boil down to IP address duplication.

Here is how to fix it

Luckily the fix is pretty simple and doesn't cause any downtime.All you have to do is to restart the affected OVC. Follow the steps bellow

ssh into your Omnistack controller and restart the VMtools

#sudo su

#sudo systemctl restart open-vm-tools.service