VMware Update Manager has "Unauthenticated" errors after VPXD service is restarted.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This KB article explains the workaround. If the VPXD server is restarted on the vCenter Server, this will result in the VMware Update Manager not being functional for some time.

Symptoms:

1. If the VPXD service has been restarted recently, VMware Update Manager might not work as expected
2. We might see "Service Unavailable" or "NotAuthenticated" errors in the vmware-vum-server.log (/var/log/vmware/vmware-updatemgr/vum-server)
 

Example:

error vmware-vum-server[22538] [Originator@6876 sub=VumVapiPrivilegeChecker] [PrivilegeCheckerImpl 252] Unexpected exception hit while trying to check for authorization: Dynamic exception type: Vmacore::Http::HttpException
--> std::exception::what: HTTP error response: Service Unavailable

error vmware-vum-server[10213] [Originator@6876 sub=InventoryMonitor] [InventoryMonitor 1824] WaitForUpdatesEx Error: Session authentication failure

error vmware-vum-server[10213] [Originator@6876 sub=InventoryMonitor] [InventoryMonitor 1622] Error while waiting for updates in InventoryMonitor Fault cause: vim.fault.NotAuthenticated

error vmware-vum-server[10213] [Originator@6876 sub=InventoryMonitor] [InventoryMonitor 1673] Unable to reach vcenter, resetting updatemgr.

info vmware-vum-server[10213] [Originator@6876 sub=VcIntegrity] [vcIntegrity 989] Reset enter

info vmware-vum-server[10213] [Originator@6876 sub=VcIntegrity] [vcIntegrity 1000] Stopping JobDispatcher

info vmware-vum-server[10213] [Originator@6876 sub=JobDispatcher] [JobDispatcher 700] Summoned to stop, cancelling all the task

error vmware-vum-server[10213] [Originator@6876 sub=JobDispatcher] [JobDispatcher 711] There was an error while cancelling task: Fault cause: vim.fault.NotAuthenticated

error vmware-vum-server[14303] [Originator@6876 sub=JobDispatcher] [JobDispatcher 107] Bad parameters in JobDispatcher::GetInstance.

Note: The above are obtained from an existing log and the values of the threads, etc. might be different. Also, the above log lines might not appear in the same sequence as above.

 

Cause

The VPXD service holds critical information required by the VMware Update Manager for communicating with the vCenter Server. When VPXD is restarted, some of the in-memory information is lost and will need to be recreated. When VMware Update Manager detects that VPXD has restarted, it will attempt to recreate the connection with VPXD (by trying to reset itself). In some cases where some active tasks were running in VMware Update Manager when VPXD was restarted, there might be a delay since VMware Update Manager will wait for some time to let such tasks get to completion, before resetting itself. 

During this time, VMware Update Manager will not be in a usable state since it is trying to reset itself.

Resolution

The mechanism where VMware Update Manager detects the VPXD restart and tries to reset itself is already in place.

Workaround:

While the mechanism of VMware Update Manager to reset itself upon detecting the VPXD restart is already in place, this might take some time (a few minutes to a few hours). The user can manually restart VMware Update Manager:

service-control --restart updatemgr

Note: This will cancel all ongoing VMware Update Manager tasks but will bring it back into the working state.