Error While Configuring SFTP for VMware Cloud Foundation Automation (VCFA) in VCF Operations 9.0 When Using a Windows-Based SFTP Server

Products

• VCF Operations
• VCF Automation

Issue/Introduction

In VCF Operations 9.0, users may encounter an error while configuring an SFTP server for VCF Automation 9.0 backups when the target SFTP server is running on Windows.

 

The following error is observed:

Error Code: LCMVMSP10035  
Error Message:  
Synthetic checker on the application platform failed.  
Synthetic check failed. Please refer to Broadcom Knowledge Base Article 389510 for remediation details.  
"platform-vmsp-platform-sftp: failed to cleanup remote file: sftp: "" (unknown)"

Environment

VCF Operations 9.0
VCF Automation 9.0

Cause

This issue is related to the behavior of the synthetic SFTP checker within the application. The logic involves creating a test file, attempting to remove it, and then closing the file handle upon exiting the function. On Windows-based SFTP servers, the file handle may still be active when the remove operation is executed, leading to a conflict. As a result, the cleanup process fails, even though the SFTP functionality itself is working as expected.

Resolution

To mitigate the issue and suppress the synthetic SFTP check failure, the following workaround can be applied by disabling the SFTP checker on any one of the node:

• SSH into the node using:

  ssh vmware-system-user@<VCFA_NODE_IP>

• Switch to root user:

  sudo -su root

• Export Kubernetes config:

  export KUBECONFIG=/etc/kubernetes/admin.conf

• Disable the SFTP check:

  kubectl patch rt $(kubectl get rt -n vmsp-platform | grep synthetic-checker | awk '{print $1}') -n vmsp-platform --type='json' -p='[{"op": "replace", "path": "/spec/helm/values/sftpCheck/enable", "value": true},{"op": "replace", "path": "/spec/helm/values/sftpCheck/writeCheck", "value": false}]'

Additional Information

VCF Services Platform Cluster Health Checks