When you have a DistributedVirtualPortGroup in vCenter (vC) with a fixed number of VirtualPorts of 10 and you set that DistributedVirtualPortGroup to “non-expanding” you will get an error with vCloud Director (vCD) when you try to allocate more than one (1) DistributedVirtualPort. However, when you look at the DVS DistributedVirtualPortGroup you find enough available DVS DistributedVirtualPort displayed.

The error message might be similar to this:

Unable to deploy network “VApp Network(urn:uuid:deaddead-dead-dead-dead-deaddeaddead)”.
com.vmware.vcloud.fabric.nsm.error.VsmException: VSM response error (10105): Failed to publish configuration on vShield Edge. Failed to configure VM vse-VAppNetwork (deaddead-0542-0542-0542-deaddeaddead)-0. (The resource vim.dvs.DistributedVirtualPort is not available in vim.dvs.DistributedVirtualPortgroup NameOfDistributedVirtualPortgroup.)

The reason behind this is, that vCD allocates the first entity (VM or vShieldEdge/VSM) to the first DistributedVirtualPort in the DistributedVirtualPortGroup. The subsequent DistributedVirtualPorts are allocated beyond the 10th DistributedVirtualPort making it impossible to allocate a free/available DistributedVirtualPort for vCD.

When you do not limit the number of DistributedVirtualPorts in the DistributedVirtualPortGroup in vC (setting it to “auto-grow”) you will see the same allocation attempts to succeed and see how vCD expands the DistributedVirtualPorts in vC for that DistributedVirtualPortGroup.

This behaviour has been detected in vCD 5.1 with vC 5.1.