Unable to save cost drivers in VMware Aria Operations

Products

VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Server hardware cost driver save operation fails with "Server is Busy" error.
Attempt to export cost drivers, modify, and then re-import into Aria Ops fails with an error "Cost Driver Validation Failed".

Environment

Aria Operations 8.16.x
Aria Operations 8.17.x
Aria Operations 8.18.x

Cause

Upgrade to Aria Operations 8.16.1 could only help in handling a minimum number of servers. The save operation fails for 500+ servers.

Resolution

Solution1 - Use Suite API:

Use suite-api to create additional cost drivers. There are no payload size limits through the suite-api route.

NOTE: When using the suite-api POST route to create new additional cost configs, all the existing configs have to be provided in the payload along with the new config to be added. This should be done to prevent overwriting of the older configs with the new config.

Solution 2 - Use Product UI:

Login as root via ssh to all the Aria Operation nodes (Master, replica and data nodes).

Run the below commands:

vi /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/tomcat-web-app/webapps/ui/WEB-INF/classes/struts.xml

Update the following line with a size that is suitable:
```
<constant name="struts.multipart.maxStringLength" value="16384"/>
```
Currently, the save API allows payload size up to 16KB, for this environment, the payload size is about 85Kb. Hence it was suggested to increase to 128KB (the next nearest power of 2).
Restart the UI service on all the nodes:
```
service vmware-vcops-web restart
```

Please note that the fix provided in 8.16.1 is not a complete fix when the number of servers is too large. Hence, import and export of cost drivers is suggested. If not, the next option is to go follow the above process.

Also note that since it's a manual change that's being performed, every time Aria Operations is upgraded, this process needs to be repeated.

===========================================

Workaround for Cost drivers import issue:

Export your cost drivers to Excel.
Modify your Server Cost and save the spreadsheet.
Import the spreadsheet back into Aria Ops.

(Note: When the error for "Cost Driver Validation Failed" appears, click on "Ignore Error". This should highlight the "Import" button and allow you to complete the cost driver import.)

Import or Export Cost Drivers

Additional Information

If you are facing cost driver save issue with any lower version/build, then upgrading it to 8.16 version should fix the issue as mentioned in release notes.

VMware Aria Operations 8.16 Release Notes

VMware Aria Operations 8.16 (KB)