'UNKNOWN' power status for newly created or onboarded machines in vRealize Automation

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Newly created or onboarded machines in vRealize Automation can intermittently show the power state as 'UNKNOWN' when the initial creation coincides with a incremental VM enumeration.

Environment

VMware vRealize Automation 8.x

Cause

vRealize Automation leverages two enumeration types for vSphere cloud accounts.

Incremental enumeration runs every 10 minutes & only collects properties which vCenter has flagged as being recently modified.

Full enumeration is run every 24 hours and collects all properties.

This issue can occur when incremental data-collection is run at the same time of Machine creation resulting in an 'UNKNOWN' power status being set. The issue is not corrected by subsequent incremental data-collections unless the power state of the machine is changed directly in vCenter. Otherwise it is only when full enumeration process is run that the power state is corrected.

Resolution

A resolution for the issue is included in vRealize Automation 8.11 release

Workaround:

To workaround the issue you can power cycle the affected virtual machine directly in vCenter. This change should sync the correct power state in vRealize Automation on the next incremental enumeration.

 

If a large number of VM's are affected and the above approach is not feasible then you can restart the provisioning service pods which will force a full enumeration process to be run but Note: that this approach will require brief downtime as it will interrupt any activities currently running in the provisioning services pods.

kubectl -n prelude rollout restart deployment provisioning-service-app
 

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
Virtual machines may intermittently show with a power status of 'UNKNOWN' in vRealize Automation until the next full enumeration process is completed.