How to troubleshoot Spring Cloud Services for VMware Tanzu

Products

Support Only for Spring

Issue/Introduction

Please see the below sections for information on troubleshooting issues with Config Server service instances in Spring Cloud Services for VMware Tanzu 3.x.

Known Issues/Limitations
Logs to Review & Gather
Client App Dependencies
Docs - Quick References

Environment

Product Version: Other

Resolution

Known Issues / Limitations

HA with Vault

SCS 3.x does not support connecting to a vault instance that is using high availability. It is recommended to use a Load Balancer (LB) in front of Vault in order to implement HA functionality.

Sync Mirrors Dashboard Button

Sync Mirrors in the Config Server dashboard in SCS 3.x does not show an updated commit hash when 'periodic' is set to true - this is a known UI issue and does not affect client app behavior.

Rotating GIT Repo Credentials

In SCS v3.1.0 – v3.1.5, you cannot update credentials for a Git repository that was originally added to a Config Server service instance using a HTTP or HTTPS URL. This means that if the repository’s credentials are rotated, the Config Server’s mirror service will be unable to update its mirror of the repository. To resolve this issue, you can update the Config Server to use SSH, rather than HTTP or HTTPS, to access the Git repository. See SSH Repository Access.

GitLab Repositories

If you are using GitLab as the repo backend, please note the following:

GitLab URLs must end in '.git'
If you have Two-Factor-Authentication enabled, you must use a token and not a password when passing credentials for the service instance.

Logs to Review and Gather

The following steps outline relevant logs which usually show the cause for failures when creating or updating config-server service instances. It may be helpful to check these logs for any evidence of syntax errors for example, otherwise you can open a Support case and attach them for review.

1. Find the service instance GUID for the problem instance:

cf service <service-name> --guid

2. Target the instance's space:

cf t -o p-spring-cloud-services -s <instance-guid>

3. Gather the logs for the instance (ideally immediately after attempting the operation that failed):

cf logs config-server --recent > config-server.log

4. Review this log for any errors and if necessary, attach to the Support case

If the error you are seeing refers to the Service Broker or there is no obvious error in this log, you can review this article which relates to the SCS Service Broker: https://community.pivotal.io/s/article/How-to-troubleshoot-Spring-Cloud-Services-3-x-management-issue

Client App Dependencies

Config Server errors and unexpected behavior seen in client (developer) applications can often be caused by mismatched dependencies.

Please review the table in this section of the docs which outlines the corresponding versions of SCS dependencies that should be included when using various Spring Boot and Spring Cloud versions: https://docs.pivotal.io/spring-cloud-services/3-1/common/client-dependencies.html

Docs - Quick References

New Architecture: SCS 3.x now uses a 'mirror service' for Git repos, which clones the external repository. Config Server instances serve properties then serve client apps from these mirrors. This diagram shows this architecture and is explained further here: https://docs.pivotal.io/spring-cloud-services/3-1/common/config-server/refreshing-properties.html

Managing Service Instances: https://docs.pivotal.io/spring-cloud-services/3-1/common/config-server/managing-service-instances.html
Writing Client Applications (for developers): https://docs.pivotal.io/spring-cloud-services/3-1/common/config-server/writing-client-applications.html