When upgrading a VCF 5.x managed Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager it returns errors: "No Upgrade Available" and: "Could not get VCF BOM details"

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

When upgrading to Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.18.x via the Update ISO, a "No upgrade available" message appears.

Reviewing the vmware_vrlcm.log file on the appliance shows that the ISO and upgrade are both visible, but the VCF BOM version could not be collected. Example of these log entries:

c.v.v.l.u.u.LCMUpgradeUtil -  -- Update Available with Build: 24029603Version: 8.18.0.0
SessionId: null; Granted Authorities: VCF_USER
is vcF user ::true
Next available version: 8.18.0.0
Could not get VCF BOM details. Please check if SDDC Manager is up and running and VCF BOM is present inside vRSLCM.
Some exception occurred while checking VCF supported versions for upgrade
Exception occurred while checking upgrade :
com.vmware.vrealize.lcm.lcops.common.exception.InvalidInputException: No upgrade available.

Environment

• VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.x
• VMware SDDC 4.x
• VMware SDDC 5.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the SDDC Manager version cannot be recognized by the current version of Aria Suite Lifecycle (previously vRSLCM).

Resolution

To avoid this issue, upgrade Aria Suite Lifecycle first (prior to SDDC Manager) when upgrading VCF to 5.2.2.

To work around this issue:

1. Take a snapshot of SDDC Manager.
2. SSH to the SDDC VM as root or as vcf, followed by su.
3. Log into the database with:

   /usr/pgsql/13/bin/psql -U postgres -h localhost -d platform

4. Find the current version (and copy it for later use):

   SELECT version FROM sddc_manager_controller;

5. Update the SDDC Manager version to an older version that Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager recognizes. In the next command, the build does not matter, so use -1234:

   UPDATE sddc_manager_controller set version ='4.5.1.0-1234';

6. Re-attempt the Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.18.x upgrade, and it should find the upgrade.
7. Once upgraded, return SDDC Manager to its proper version by updating the database again:

   UPDATE sddc_manager_controller set version ='<version captured from step 4>';

Note: Once Aria Suite Lifecycle Manager is upgraded and tested, remove the snapshots from SDDC Manager to avoid future performance issues.

Additional Information

• Ensure that LCM is still at the latest PSPACK, the steps listed here still require that LCM has the proper support pack installed to enable the upgrade being attempted. 
• The steps above apply to any component upgrade attempt in Lifecycle and not just failing to upgrade Lifecycle itself.