Deployment of Virtual Machines with 3 NICS or more fail on vCenter Server 7 and vRealize Automation 7.x

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Deploying a VM on vCenter 7 with 3 NICS or more fails with following error:
  Request failed: Machine vmXXXXX: CloneVM : [CloneVM_Task] - A specified parameter was not correct: deviceChange[1].device.key
• In <drive>:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\vCAC\vCenter\<agent name>\Logs\vSphereAgent.log you may see an error similar to:
  <date>T10:12:30.511Z XXXXXXX vcac: [component="iaas:VRMAgent.exe" priority="Info" thread="4788"] [sub-thread-Id="5" context="<Id>" token="<token_id>"] WorkitemResponse [<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-16"?><workItemResponse id="<Workitem_id>"><task type="CloneVM"><result succeeded="False"><message>[CloneVM_Task] - A specified parameter was not correct: deviceChange[1].device.key</message><parameter name="VirtualMachine.Admin.BuildFailure">true</parameter><parameter name="trace_id">TQm170im</parameter></result></task></workItemResponse>]
• On vCenter Server /var/log/vmware/vpxd/vpxd.log you see an error similar to: 
  <Date>T11:12:16.894+01:00 info vpxd[13100] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=xxxxxxff-xx-xx] [VpxLRO] -- ERROR lro-11858971 -- <vm-Id> -- vim.VirtualMachine.clone: vmodl.fault.InvalidArgument:
  --> Result:
  --> (vmodl.fault.InvalidArgument) {
  --> faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
  --> faultMessage = (vmodl.LocalizableMessage) [
  --> (vmodl.LocalizableMessage) {
  --> key = "com.vmware.vim.vpxd.vmprov.duplicateDeviceKey",
  --> arg = <unset>,
  --> message = <unset>
  --> }
  --> ],
  --> invalidProperty = "deviceChange[1].device.key"

Environment

VMware vRealize Automation 7.x

Cause

This issue is caused due to vRealize Automation using the same key value for each NIC. vSphere 7 no longer tolerates that resulting in the errors.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in vRealize Automation 7.6 Patch 18, available to download at Cumulative Update for vRealize Automation 7.6.