CRITICAL PROBLEM shown when viewing the cluster health on a VMware Cloud Director appliance

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• Viewing the Embedded Database Availability section within the VAMI (i.e., https://<vCD cell address>:5480) on VMware Cloud Director appliance shows the health as CRITICAL PROBLEM as well as one of the following errors:
  
  Two primaries are showing up in repmgr inventory, or a standby is following an "old" primary (not the current primary).
  
  or
  
  There was an error getting the appliance's embedded database availability status.
  
  
• Running the script /opt/vmware/appliance/bin/api/replicationClusterStatus.py as the postgres user on the cell results in an error similar to the following:
  
  Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "replicationClusterStatus.py", line 396, in <module>
    main()
  File "replicationClusterStatus.py", line 390, in main
    rmStatus, rc = repmgr_status()
  File "replicationClusterStatus.py", line 281, in repmgr_status
    with open(APPLIANCE_TYPE) as f:
PermissionError: [Errno 13] Permission denied: '/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/appliance-type'
  
  
• The permissions on the file /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/appliance-type do not match the following:
  
  -rw-r--r-- 1 vcloud vcloud ...

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 10.5.x

Cause

The file /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/appliance-type contains information about the appliance that is queried during the collection of the cluster health status. If this information cannot be accessed, it will cause an error that aborts the process and prevents the cluster status health from being determined.

Resolution

To correct the permissions on the required file, perform the following steps:

1. Initiate a command line session to the cell as root using either the console or SSH.
2. Navigate to the location containing the appliance-type file:
   
   cd /opt/vmware/vcloud-director/
   
   

3. Use the following commands to ensure that there is appropriate access to the file:

   chown vcloud:vcloud appliance-type
chmod 644 appliance-type