"No compute placement candidates found" error during provisioning in VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 Patch 1 and above when all constraint tags match

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• When attempting to provision new virtual machines in VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 Patch 1, the request fails with the following message:

Original Task Error: 'No compute placement candidates found in cloud zones that can match the constraints'

• The provisioning diagram indicates that all constraints (e.g., project, cloud zone, compute tags) match successfully, yet the placement engine fails to select a valid candidate.
• In this scenario, the behavior was observed specifically for Windows workloads, whereas Linux-based templates (e.g., RHEL) continued provisioning as expected under the same cloud template logic.

Environment

VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 Patch 1

Cause

Starting in version 8.18.1 Patch 1, the Aria Automation placement engine began treating the absence of a valid image mapping as a hard requirement for successful Day-1 placement.

In previous versions, a missing image mapping would result in provisioning placement succeeding, with eventual failure occurring later during clone execution (due to the missing template). As of 8.18.1 Patch 1, placement fails early during validation if no matching image mapping exists for the requested image name.

Resolution

Ensure that image mappings are defined for each requested image in your cloud template and can be resolved and leveraged in the blueprint YAML syntax.