This week I upgraded (and migrated) my SliemaLabs NestedESXi vCenter from a Windows 6.0 server to a 6.5 VCSA …everything went well, but ran into an issue when I went to upgrade my distributed switch to 6.5.0. Even though everything appeared to be working with regards to the host and VM networking associated with the switch, when I went to upgrade it I got the following error:

Doing a quick Google for Unable to retrieve data about the distributed switch came up with nothing and clicking on next didn’t do anything actionable. A restart of the Web Client and a reboot of the VCSA didn’t resolve the issue either.The distributed switch in question was still on version 5.5 as I forgot to upgrade it to 6.0 during the upgrade to vCenter 6.0. Weather that condition somehow caused the error I am not sure…regardless the quick fix or better said…work around is pretty simple; Use PowerCLI.

Interestingly the Vendor is different…though not sure this caused the issue. In any case the work around is to upgrade the distributed switch using the Set-VDSwitch command.

And success!

I’m not sure what caused the error to appear in the Web Client but the workaround meant that it became a moot point. Suffice to say if you come across this error in your Web Client when trying to upgrade a distributed switch…head over the PowerCLI.