Deploy of OVF from Aria automation fails with an error at vCenter saying 'The operation is not allowed in the current state of the datastore'

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

This symptoms is observed when the deployments are done via Aria Automation, Terraform or postman &  datastore in maintenance mode is getting selected while deploying. 

Environment

Aria Automation 8.16.x

Aria Automation 8.18.x

Cause

The process of creating a VM from an OVF template through Aria Automation involves two steps:

1. Creating an intermediate VM: This initial VM is created based on the OVF template, serving as a temporary container for the VM's configuration and data.
2. Creating a secondary VM: This step leverages the previously created intermediate VM as a base to generate the final, usable VM.

The issue arose due to the datastore selection process for the intermediate VM. The initial logic prioritized datastores with the most available space but did not account for their maintenance mode status. As a result, a datastore in maintenance mode was chosen, leading to the failure of the intermediate VM's creation since VMs cannot be placed on a datastore in maintenance mode.

Resolution

This is a known issue with Aria Automation 8.16.x and 8.18.x. 
Fix is scheduled with next upcoming patch 8.18.1 Patch 2 | VCF 9.0

Additional Information

The solution is to implement a filter to exclude maintenance mode datastores during the datastore selection process, even if they have the most free space. This ensures that only datastores in a usable state are considered, eliminating the issue of selecting a maintenance datastore and allowing the intermediate VM creation to succeed.