Onboarded VMs not reflected in Project or Cloud Zone usage metrics in Aria Automation 8.18.1

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

In VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1, onboarded vSphere virtual machines may not appear in project or Cloud Zone usage metrics, even though they are visible in the Deployments and Virtual Machines views. This impacts quota enforcement and reporting.

• Onboarded VMs are visible in the UI but not counted against project or Cloud Zone quotas.

• API calls to /iaas/api/projects/<project-id> return zero instances or memory usage.

• VMs were onboarded successfully but later vMotioned to other hosts through normal DRS activity for balancing resources across hosts.

• Usage metrics no longer reflect actual deployed resources.

  • You may see a negative integer value for the consumption of resources when polling for resource consumption statistics through the API.

Environment

VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 GA through Patch 3.

Cause

This issue occurs because the migration reconciliation logic released in 8.18.1 depends on the presence of the project custom property to track group resource placement. Onboarded VMs do not have this property by default.

When a vMotion occurs, reconciliation cannot verify ownership and incorrectly removes the placement association, even if the VM has not changed Cloud Zones.

Resolution

Resolution
This issue is a symptom of a broader underlying placement link corruption within Aria Automation. 

To resolve this issue and remediate the impacted environment metrics and quotas, please follow the comprehensive, step-by-step resolution path documented in core KB 396325.