"The entries under the networks array must reference either clustered or non-clustered resources only." warning label for blueprint network properties after upgrading Aria Automation

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• After upgrading to Aria 8.16 and above Cloud Templates now flag a warning label for the Network properties of Cloud Machine resources which include a count property. The error message reads:

The entries under the networks array must reference either clustered or non-clustered resources only. You can either use the map_to_object expression or add count:1 to convert a non-clustered to a clustered resource, or you can remove the count to convert a clustered resource to non-clustered.


• The network properties may also be duplicated to be present more than once when the blueprint is viewed in the blueprint yaml editor in the UI.
• Deployments may fail with errors similar to:

Cannot deserialize value of type ArrayList<string> from Array value (token JsonToken.START_ARRAY) at [source: UNKNOWN; byte offset: #UNKNOWN] (through reference chain: com.vmware.admiral.compute.content.TemplateComputeDescription["networks"]->ArrayList[0])

Environment

• VMware Aria Automation 8.16, 8.17, 8.18

Cause

• The Blueprint YAML editor is stricter in the later releases when it comes to referencing the single vs clustered objects.
  This affects:
  • the count property
  • the map_by function

Resolution

Resolving the issue depends on the scenario which caused it:

1. Ensure each network object added to the blueprint has the count property added:
   
   Network0:
type: Cloud.NSX.Network
properties:
  deviceIndex: 0
  networkType: existing
  count: 1


2. Where you are using the map_by function to assign multiple networks to a VM, this should not itself be placed inside a list:
   
   Machine0:
type: Cloud.Machine
properties:
  image: ${input.image}
  flavor: ${input.flavor}
  networks:
    - '${map_by(  ....  )}'
  networks: '${map_by(  ....  )}'
   
   
   

Once the syntax is amended as above, the duplicated network lines can be removed from the Cloud Template in the yaml editor.