VM deployments are not being powered off automatically after the lease expiration period and prior to their deletion.

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• VMs deployments are not being powered off automatically after the lease expiration of the deployment and prior to its deletion.
• A deployment will not be powered off upon reaching the lease expiration time.
• The expire event, which triggers the power-off action for the VM, will not be triggered in the deployment view.

Catalog svc log show NULL pointer error

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "java.time.Instant.isBefore(java.time.Instant)" because the return value of "com.vmware.tango.dep.domain.DeploymentUserEntity.getLastUpdatedAt()" is null
        at com.vmware.tango.dep.DeploymentUtils.triggerDeploymentUserSync(DeploymentUtils.java:148)
        at com.vmware.tango.dep.service.ResourceActionRequestService.submitAction(ResourceActionRequestService.java:312)
        at com.vmware.tango.dep.service.ResourceActionRequestService.submitResourceAction(ResourceActionRequestService.java:274)
        at com.vmware.tango.dep.provider.registry.controller.DeploymentResourceActionController.submitDeploymentActionRequest(DeploymentResourceActionController.java:83)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:77)
        at java.base/jdk.internal.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:43)
        at java.base/java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:568)

 

Environment

Aria Orchestrator 8.18

Cause

• A new feature was introduced to sync usernames with display names. This synchronization occurs every time an action is triggered.
• In this case, the action is initiated by a service-account user that is not registered with the identity service.
• However, following the upgrade, this service account was added to the database, but its identity details remain incomplete or missing.
• As a result, when the system attempts to update the display name during the sync, it encounters a Null Pointer Exception (NPE) due to the missing service account details.
• This exception disrupts the execution flow, causing the action to fail.

Resolution

Apply Aria Automation 8.18.1 Patch 2 VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 Cumulative Update #2

We have tested this issue in Aria Automation 8.18.1 Patch 2, and no issues were observed in this version.

Based on our validation, this problem does not occur in the 8.18.1 P2 environment

Workaround 

1. Navigate to Aria Automation and go to the Infrastructure tab.

2. Under the Administer section, click on Settings.

3. Locate the setting named "Show names of User" and disable it.

4. Wait for approximately 15–20 minutes to allow the setting to update in the system cache.

5. Once the waiting period is over, retry the expire flow to verify the behavior.

Additional Information

Impact of Disabling the Username-to-Display Name Sync Feature:

Disabling this feature stops the automatic synchronization of display names with usernames.

• Display names will remain visible for existing users who have already been synced.

• However, if a new user is added to Active Directory (AD) after the feature is disabled, their display name will not be visible in the system.

• This may affect user visibility or identification in UI components that rely on display names.