Reboot of the VMware vCenter server appliance causes the vCenter endpoint to enter an unusable state within the Automation Orchestrator vCenter plugin

Products

• VMware Aria Suite

Issue/Introduction

• Reboot of the vCenter server puts the vCenter endpoint in the Automation Orchestrator vCenter plugin into an unusable state.   
• You are unable to expand the Storage policies and observes the following snippets in the orchestrator app server logs 

202x-xx-0xT17:26:24.626Z ERROR vco [host='vco-app-85bdf998df-8gjs8' thread='http-nio-8280-exec-31' user='xxxxxxxxx' org='xxxxxxxx-xxxxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxx trace='xxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxx'] {} com.vmware.o11n.plugin.vsphere.inventory.AbstractPbmRelator - Error while retrieving child relations of StoragePolicies with ID vCenterFQDN id:storagepolicies
 Error message: The session is not authenticated.
        at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:93) [catalina.jar:9.0.86]

• You have validated that the certificate chain on the vCenter server and confirmed the certificate chain is consistent and correct. However, the workflow Update a vCenter Server instance shows "Warning one or more certificates in the chain are not valid". 

Environment

VMware Aria Automation Orchestrator 8.18.x

Cause

This is a known issue with the Aria Automation/VMware Aria Orchestrator 8.18.x.

Resolution

Prerequisites

Follow these steps to backup your VMware Aria Automation 8.x appliance using online snapshots.

• You must back up all VMware Aria Automation appliances, at the same time - simulataniously for all nodes.
• If you are making the snapshots manually, you must start the snapshots of the second and the third node not more than 40 seconds after you start the snapshost for the first node.
• When you back up the VMware Aria Automation appliance, disable in-memory snapshots and enable quiescing (quiescing is a requirement only for version 8.9 and newer).

Procedure

1. Download the plug-in file to your local machine. The preferred file format for Automation Orchestrator plug-ins is .vmoapp. .dar files are also supported.
2. In Automation Orchestrator, select the System Settings.
3. On the Plug-ins card, click Open.
4. Click Add Plug-in.
5. In the General pane, click Select and add the plug-in file.
6. Select a log level.
7. Click Next.
8. Review the plug-in information, if applicable, accept the end-user license agreement, and click Install.
9. Click Upload.

The plug-in is installed or updated, and the Automation Orchestrator server service is restarted.