Patch Installation For Aria Automation Fails With No Errors

Products

VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Aria Automation patch installation completes prematurely, and the patched version is not reflected in the environment, despite multiple attempts.
In the VMware Aria Suite Lifecycle UI, the request status misleadingly shows as completed successfully, masks the deployment failure, and reports a false positive state.

The following error might also be seen while retrying patch installation after cleaning leftover upgrade data. The following message will be observed in the var/log/vrlcm/vmware_vrlcm.log file:

####-##-##T##:##:##.133Z ERROR vrlcm[1166] [pool-3-thread-30] [c.v.v.l.p.c.v.t.VraVaUpgradeStatusCheckTask]  -- Un-expected status seen after Upgrade on VMware Aria Automation VA <FQDN>. To know more about the failure, run command "vracli upgrade status --details" on the VMware Aria Automation VA <FQDN>. Upgrade is not successful, VMware Aria Automation appliance has been auto reverted to its previous working state. You can retry the upgrade by going to the product section

Error Code: LCMVRAVACONFIG90030
VMware Aria Automation VA Upgrade Status Check failed.
Upgrade on vRealize Automation VA <FQDN> failed with state 'fatal'. To know more about the failure, run command 'vracli upgrade status --details' on the vRealize Automation VA <FQDN>. To revert to snapshot, click RETRY with 'revertSnapshot' property set to true.

Executing the command on Aria Automation SSH console vracli upgrade status --details returns the following response:
```
No upgrade is currently in progress.
```

The following events will be observed in the /var/log/vmware/prelude/upgrade-noop.log file.

[INFO][####-##-## ##:##:##][<FQDN>] Downloading manifest ...
[INFO][####-##-## ##:##:##][<FQDN>] Manifest downloaded successfully.
[INFO][####-##-## ##:##:##][<FQDN>] Validating manifest ...
[ERROR][####-##-## ##:##:##][<FQDN>][Exit Code: 1] Manifest signature validation failed.
[ERROR][####-##-## ##:##:##][<FQDN>] Repository product ID mismatch. The specified repository is not applicable for this product.
[ERROR][####-##-## ##:##:##][<FQDN>] Manifest validation failed.

Environment

Aria Automation 8.x
Aria Suite Lifecycle 8.x

Cause

The patch installation failure was primarily caused by a corrupted or incorrect patch binary manifest, leading to signature validation and product ID mismatch errors.
This issue was compounded by the presence of leftover runtime upgrade files from previous attempts.

Resolution

Follow the steps below to resolve the issue.

Remove / Clean the old upgrade and patch data from the Aria Automation node (refer to KB 377241 for guidance).
Delete the patch from Aria Suite Lifecycle (Lifecycle Operations > Settings > Binary Mapping > Patch Binaries page).
Re-add the patch binary to LCM (refer to KB 389977 for guidance).
Verify the consistency of the re-added file by checking its checksum in LCM (refer to KB 286808 for guidance).
Re-initiate Patch Installation again from Aria Suite lifecycle manager.

Additional Information

Initially, the LCM Product Patch Install request may complete in an unusually short time (13 minutes 42 seconds), indicating a problem
Logs (vmware_vrlcm.log and upgrade-noop.log) would show warnings about leftover files, unexpected upgrade status, manifest signature validation failures, and repository product ID mismatches
The successful resolution after removing and re-adding the patch binary confirms that the integrity and correct mapping of the patch file were crucial for a successful installation
The patch installation would then complete successfully after approximately an hour, which is the expected duration