Adding an S3 bucket for Content Library times out in vCenter Server 6.7

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to configure an S3 bucket with your Content Library, you receive a timeout error such as " HTTP Request error: Connection Timed Out ".

The above symptoms occurs if the following criteria is met:

1. vCenter Server is running on version 6.7 (any build)
2. A proxy server has been defined for the vCenter Server's external access
3. In the Content Library logging (/var/log/vmware/content-library/cls.log), you see errors similar to:

2020-10-20T08:56:54.560Z | ERROR    | kfpi6fr3-2225-auto-1pu-h5:70000735 | tomcat-http-15            | VcspClientImpl                 | exception while getting vcsp endpoint https://<S3 URL>/<bucket>/<files>/lib_7ffbb42c-4c76-4ec9-b440-2ec33652a943_982b3034-8063-4081-832d-0924cc782087.json
java.net.SocketTimeoutException: connect timed out
at java.net.PlainSocketImpl.socketConnect(Native Method)
at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.doConnect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:350)
at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connectToAddress(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:206)
at java.net.AbstractPlainSocketImpl.connect(AbstractPlainSocketImpl.java:188)
at java.net.SocksSocketImpl.connect(SocksSocketImpl.java:392)
at java.net.Socket.connect(Socket.java:606)
at sun.security.ssl.SSLSocketImpl.connect(SSLSocketImpl.java:681)
at org.apache.http.conn.ssl.SSLSocketFactory.connectSocket(SSLSocketFactory.java:522)
at org.apache.http.conn.ssl.SSLSocketFactory.connectSocket(SSLSocketFactory.java:401)
at org.apache.http.impl.conn.DefaultClientConnectionOperator.openConnection(DefaultClientConnectionOperator.java:177)
at org.apache.http.impl.conn.ManagedClientConnectionImpl.open(ManagedClientConnectionImpl.java:304)

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.x

Resolution

Integrating Amazon S3 buckets with vCenter Server 6.7 Content Library is currently unsupported. This is due to the proxy configuration not being retrieved when communicating externally to create the Content Library connection.

vCenter Server 7.0 and later support integration with Amazon S3 buckets for Content Library.

Currently there is no workaround for vCenter Server 6.7.

Additional Information

Integrating Content Library with Amazon S3

vCenter Server 7.0 release notes