Recently I have encountered a problem when installing NSX-T 2.5 (and 3.0) on ESXi 6.7u3.
The initial configuration failed with the following errors (NSX-T 2.5): “Failed to install software on host. Create user [nsxuser] failed on …” or (NSX-T 3.0): “Failed to install software on host. Unable to add user on host…”
NSX-T 2.5.1:
NSX-T 3.0:
After some troubleshooting it turned out that the problem was caused by ESXi password and account lockout policy which got changed.
During initial configuration NSX-T creates a user (nsxuser) on the ESXi hosts. If the password policy is too restrictive the NSX-T generated password is not compliant and user creation fails. This results in the installation failure.
The quick solution to the problem is to temporarily change the password and lockout policy on ESXi hosts for the NSX-T installation.
This can be done by modifying the “Security.PasswordQualityControl” advanced parameter on the ESXi hosts.
After changing this parameter to the default value “retry=3 min=disabled,disabled,disabled,7,7” and using the “RESOLVE” buttion in NSX-T installation succeeded.
Once NSX-T got installed on all ESXi hosts got password policy can ba changed back to the previous state.
More information regarding setting the password policy can be found here: