[VMConAWS] Error on Select Storage screen during Cross vCenter vMotion "The validated character sequence is empty"

Products

• VMware Cloud on AWS

Issue/Introduction

To understand the known issue and workaround until the fix is available in upcoming releases.

Symptoms:

While attempting to do a cross vcenter vmotion of VMs an error is displayed at the Select Storage wizard and does allow to proceed further.

" An error occurred while trying to load data. This could be a temporary outage. You can retry the operation by clicking the retry button".

It works when "Cross vCenter Server Export" option is used and Imported in the destination vCenter. Reference document about "Cross vCenter Server Export"

vsphere_client_virgo.log

 [ERROR] http-nio-5090-exec-4125    714xx359 10xxx34 2xxx73 com.vmware.vise.mvc.exception.GlobalExceptionHandler       Exception handled while processing request for /ui/data/propertiesByRelation/urn:vmomi:Folder:group-d1:xx284e65-xx7b-xx98-xx91-xxxx31b35bd3?properties=iofilterInfo,profileContent&relation=pbmProfiles&targetType=PbmRequirementStorageProfile: java.lang.RuntimeException: com.vmware.vim.binding.vmodl.MethodFault: The validated character sequence is empty

at com.vmware.vise.data.adapters.risetovise.RiseToViseResult.toRuntimeException(RiseToViseResult.java:177)

...

Caused by: com.vmware.vim.binding.vmodl.MethodFault: The validated character sequence is empty

at com.vmware.vise.vim.commons.MixedUtil.getMethodFault(MixedUtil.java:115)

...

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: The validated character sequence is empty

Cause

This is a problem affecting 8.0 vCenter UI / SDDC 1.22 v2. A general UI error is shown when any request to backend/API fails.

vCenter UI tries to establish a connection to PBM service on vCenter servervcenter.sddc-xx-xxx-xxx-xx.vmwarevmc.com using a thumbprint.The problem comes when the certificate of the destination vCenter server  has been imported/published into the source vCenter server. In this case, thumbprint will be null no PBM connection will be established and UI shows the error.

Resolution

This is a known issue and VMware is aware of this. The fix will be available in future release. 

Workaround:

Suggested workaround until the issue is fixed is to Import VMs. User can login to desired destination vCenter and import VMs from source vCenter.  Reference document about "Cross vCenter Server Export"

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:

unable to migrate workloads using the Migrate(Export) option.