Unable to access Aria Automation Orchestrator Control Center to setup the authentication provider.

Products

VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

Trying to setup the authentication provider, but there is no option for Control Center when accessing the Orchestrator landing page:

https://<vrofqdn>/vco

Environment

Aria Automation Orchestrator 8.18.1

Cause

The control center has been deprecated in 8.18.1.

Automation Orchestrator 8.18 What's New

Plug-in and log level configuration are moved from the Control Center to the System settings section in the Automation Orchestrator Client

Plug-in and log configuration are now performed from the System Settings page of the Automation Orchestrator Client. New REST APIs for managing plug-ins and log levels are also introduced. You can find more information about the Automation Orchestrator REST API in the Swagger UI located at https://<your_orchestrator_FQDN>/vco/api/docs/.
Control Center will be removed from Automation Orchestrator in the next release

Automation Orchestrator configuration will be done through the command line interface. For more information, see the product documentation.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Aria-Automation/services/rn/vmware-aria-automation-release-notes/index.html

Resolution

Retrieving the current authentication provider

You can retrieve the current authentication provider by running the following command:

vracli vro authentication

Configure the authentication provider by using a guided wizard

To configure the authentication provider by using a guided configuration wizard, run the following command:

vracli vro authentication wizard

After running the authentication wizard command, you are prompted to provide the necessary authentication provider information such as the type of authentication provider, hostname, and password.

Configure the authentication provider by using predefined parameters

To configure the authentication provider by using predefined configuration parameters, run the vracli vro authentication set command. The command can have the following parameters:


Parameter	Importance	Description
`-p` or `--provider`	Required	This parameter defines the authentication provider type. The parameter value can be either `vsphere` or `vra` depending on the authentication provider you want to configure: vSphere or VMware Aria Automation.
`-hn` or `--hostname`	Required	The hostname or URL of the authentication provider you want to configure. Both options are applicable.
`-u` or `--username`	Required	The username of the administrator associated with the authentication provider.
`--password-file`	Optional	The path to a file containing the password of the administrator account for the authentication provider. If left empty, you receive a prompt for adding the password data. The password file must be stored inside the /data/vco/usr/lib/vco directory of the Automation Orchestrator Appliance. When adding the parameter in the command, exclude the /data/vco part of the filepath.
`--admin-group`	Required for vSphere authetnication providers. Ignored for VMware Aria Automation authentication providers.	Parameter for adding the Automation Orchestrator administrators group of the specified vSphere deployment.
`--admin-group-domain`	Required for vSphere authetnication providers. Ignored for VMware Aria Automation authentication providers.	This parameter defines the administrator group domain.
`-k` or `--ignore-certificate`	Optional	Using this parameter, the authentication process is configured to automatically trust the certificate of the authentication provider.
`-f` or `--force`	Optional	Using this parameter, you are not prompted for confirmation if the specified authentication provider is already configured.
`--fqdn`	Optional	This parameter defines the external address of the Automation Orchestrator server. Note: You can retrieve the FQDN address for your environment by running the nslookup <your_orchestrator_IP> command.

Example authentication configurations

echo "my-pass" > /data/vco/usr/lib/vco/password_file vracli vro authentication set -p vra -hn https://my-aria-automation.local -u [email protected] --password-file /usr/lib/vco/password_file

vracli vro authentication set -p vsphere -hn https://my-vsphere.local -u [email protected] --tenant vsphere.local --admin-group Administrators --admin-group-domain vsphere.local

Unregister an authentication provider

You can unregister the current authentication provider by running the vracli vro authentication unregister command. This command can have the following parameters:

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-Aria-Automation/8.18/Installing-Configuring-Automation-Orchestrator/GUID-01E0E2DF-9027-49EE-9A54-738A7A9BF4CD.html

Additional Information

If you encounter an error similar to "Admin Group Domain or Admin Group is invalid" , please follow the outlined steps in