"The service is currently unavailable..." error when accessing the on-premises vCloud Availability plug-in for the vSphere Client

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When accessing the on-premises vCloud Availability plug-in from the vCenter Client, you see the following error:

The service is currently unavailable, if the problem persists, contact your cloud service provider.

• You can access the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance managment portal and the system health shows as OK.
• In /opt/vmware/h4/replicator/log/replicator.log on the vCloud Availabillity on-premises appliance, you see a similar error:

2019-06-06 10:42:02.933 ERROR - [ui-proxy_e4554c56-####-####-####-####d1a###bf_no] [https--nio-8043-exec-3] c.v.h4.common.config.SecurityConfig      : An unauthorized POST request from 172.17.0.103 to /sessions failed.

org.springframework.security.authentication.BadCredentialsException: Invalid timestamp 1559788846595
        at com.vmware.spring.security.saml.SamlProvider.authenticate(SamlProvider.java:126)
        at org.springframework.security.authentication.ProviderManager.authenticate(ProviderManager.java:175)
        at com.vmware.spring.security.creds.JsonCredentialsAuthenticationFilter.attemptAuthentication(JsonCredentialsAuthenticationFilter.java:140)
        at org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.doFilter(AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.java:212)
        at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:334)
        at org.springframework.security.web.authentication.AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.doFilter(AbstractAuthenticationProcessingFilter.java:200)
        at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:334)
        at com.vmware.h4.common.servlet.InitialConfigFilter.doFilter(InitialConfigFilter.java:98)
        at org.springframework.security.web.FilterChainProxy$VirtualFilterChain.doFilter(FilterChainProxy.java:334)

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vCloud Availability 3.0.x

Cause

This issue can be caused by sync issue between the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance and the NTP source in the on-premises environment.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, perform the following actions:

• In the on-premises environment ensure that the following components have their times synchronized to the same NTP source:
  • vCenter Server
  • vCenter database (if external)
  • PSC (if external)
  • ESXi hosts
  • vCloud Availability on-premises appliance
• Ensure that the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance has its hostname defined in the on-premises DNS server.
• After resolving the NTP issue, reload the systemd manager configuration and restart the timesyncd service on the vCloud Availability on-premises appliance:

systemctl daemon-reload
systemctl restart systemd-timesyncd -l