Connecting to MS SQL DB in Aria Orchestrator using Microsoft's closed-source JDBC driver does not work: No suitable driver found

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms

• Trying to configure JDBC connection with the Microsoft JDBC driver as explained in the article Adding a JDBC connector for the Automation Orchestrator SQL plug-in
• Error in "Add a database" workflow: com.vmware.o11n.plugin.database.DatabaseException: java.sql.SQLException: No suitable driver found for jdbc:sqlserver://<connection_string>
• Issue adding SQL "Always On" / high availability DB to Inventory - this feature is only available using the JDBC driver, and not the jTDS driver for MSSQL
  • Using this connection string pattern doesn't work: jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://db.example.com:1433/<other_options>;multiSubnetFailover=true
    

     

Environment

• VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator 8.x - up as far as 8.18.1 GA is affected.
• Please see Resolution section for fixed versions.

Cause

Microsoft's own closed-source JDBC driver for MSSQL has generally not been supported in vRO 8.x 
The following drivers are supported by all versions Orchestrator SQL plugin provided in 8.x releases:

• MSSQL - net.sourceforge.jtds.jdbc.Driver - expected connection string : jdbc:jtds:sqlserver:...
• ORACLE - oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver - expected connection string: jdbc:oracle:thin:...
• POSTGRESQL - org.postgresql.Driver
• MYSQL - com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
• HSQLDB - org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver - expected connection string: jdbc:hsqldb:...


Support for this driver is provided by the attached plugin file in this KB (or fix versions referenced below)

• MSSQL - com.microsoft.sqlserver - expected connection string : jdbc:sqlserver:...

Resolution

Closed-source driver support

Support for Microsoft's own MSSQL driver jdbc:sqlserver is included in the Aria Orchestrator SQL plugin versions provided in the following releases:

• Aria Orchestrator 8.18.1 Patch 1 (hotfix) - KB 385294  with the driver mssql-jdbc-12.8.1.jre11.jar or mssql-jdbc-12.8.1.jre8.jar.
• VCF 9.0 Automation - available later in 2025 with no set release date at this time

Installing plugin 

To provide support in Orchestrator 8.18.x without installing the patch, please follow these steps:

1. Before installing the plugin, run this command on the appliance to update the search path:

   • kubectl -n prelude get deployment vco-app -o yaml | sed "s/.\/create_server_symlinks \&\& rm/.\/create_server_symlinks \&\& echo  \'CLASSPATH=\$CLASSPATH:\$(echo \"\/var\/run\/vco\/plugins\/SQL\/lib\/\"* | tr \" \"  \":\" ) \'  >> \/usr\/lib\/vco\/app-server\/bin\/setenv.sh \&\& rm/g" | kubectl -n prelude replace -f -

2. Download the plugin attached to this KB
3. Come to Plugins section of the Orchestrator GUI and install this plugin
4. Follow the steps in the docs article Adding a JDBC connector for the Automation Orchestrator SQL plug-in as you would for any other SQL driver
5. Connect to your MSSQL database using a jdbc:sqlserver:// connection string

 

Workaround

The open-source jTDS driver for MS SQL is supported out-of-the-box by Aria Orchestrator.

It can be downloaded from https://jtds.sourceforge.net/ and used with connection string jdbc:jtds:sqlserver://... as in the documentation Adding a JDBC connector for the Automation Orchestrator SQL plug-in