SDN network controller RPC timeout errors and resetting OVSDB states

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SDN network controller RPC timeout errors and resetting OVSDB states

XFACTOR1990 20

Hello Support team.

I was trying to push network policy updates to host hypervisors thru the SDN Network Controller however it is logging RPC timeout errors. I looked into the system but I don't know how to fix the connection. Can you please walk me through on how to restart southbound communication channels and reset OVSDB connection states.

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Hello XFACTOR1990,

RPC timeout errors in SDN Network Controller usually indicate that the southbound channels to the host agents are stuck and OVSDB sessions are not responding. The supported way to reset this is to restart the Host Agent service on each Hyper‑V host and clear the OVSDB connection state from the controller. On the host, run Restart-Service -Name NcHostAgent in PowerShell to reinitialize the southbound communication. On the Network Controller node, you can use Clear-NetworkControllerOVSDBConnection -Node <HostFQDN> to drop stale OVSDB sessions, then the controller will rebuild them automatically. If you want to reset all connections, run Get-NetworkControllerOVSDBConnection | Clear-NetworkControllerOVSDBConnection.

After restarting, verify with Get-NetworkControllerOVSDBConnection that the sessions are re‑established and check the event logs under Applications and Services Logs → Microsoft → Windows → NetworkController for any lingering RPC errors. This procedure ensures that the controller and the host agents resynchronize their state and policy pushes resume normally.

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Thank you,

HL.