vCenter Server Appliance REST-API Calls Fails With Unable to Authorized User

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• In vCenter Server Appliance API explorer/Postman you see response similar to:

unauthorized response:
{
    "type": "com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.unauthenticated",
    "value": {
        "messages": [
            {
                "args": [],
                "default_message": "This method requires authentication.",
                "id": "vapi.method.authentication.required"
            }
        ]
    }
}

• In /var/log/vmware/messages log, you see entries similar to:
  

   YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.881410+00:00 <psc_fqdn> cli: twisted "127.0.0.1" - - [11/Mar/2019:23:00:04 +0000] "POST /api HTTP/1.1" 200 2783 "-" "vAPI http client"
   YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.207685+00:00 <psc_fqdn> cli: vmware.appliance.vapi.auth Authorization request for service_id: com.vmware.cis.session, operation_id: create
   YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.211838+00:00 <psc_fqdn> cli: twisted "127.0.0.1" - - [11/Mar/2019:23:00:32 +0000] "POST /api HTTP/1.1" 200 143 "-" "vAPI http client"
   YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.215782+00:00 <psc_fqdn> cli: vmware.appliance.vapi.auth Authorization request for service_id: com.vmware.appliance.recovery.backup.job, operation_id: create
   YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.217880+00:00 <psc_fqdn> cli: vmware.appliance.extensions.authorization.authorization_sso FindAllParentGroups Failed {[Errno 2] No such file or directory}
   YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.220198+00:00 <psc_fqdn> cli: vmware.appliance.extensions.authorization.authorization_sso FindAllParentGroups Failed {[Errno 2] No such file or directory}

•  Restarting applmgmt service or rebooting vCenter Server Appliance makes authentication to succeed for a short duration

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.5.x

Resolution

This issue is resolved in vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 U3k.