Remote Console from Aria Automation freezes

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• You are connecting to the Remote Console via Aria Automation
• You are connecting to VMs in vCenter 8.x
• The remote console proxy is already enabled with property  -Denable.remote-console-proxy=true 
• The console connects but after logging in, the console freezes after some time, usually when performing tasks, such as opening a browser or file explorer
• The console never frees up after (10 - 15) seconds and needs to be restarted
• Remote console through vCenter has no issues
• The following errors may be seen in the Console section of the web browser Dev Tools:
  • Disconnected: illegal server message type ### wmks.min.js:1:6825
  • decode overrun ### vs ###
  • InvalidStateError: The source image could not be decoded
  • Disconnected: unsupported encoding ####

Environment

VMware Aria Automation 8.18.x

Resolution

Workaround 1: Enable the Remote Console Proxy in vSphere

It is possible to enable proxying of remote consoles through vSphere en route from ESX to Aria Automation.
This is documented in the Techdocs article, Manage the VMware Remote Console Proxy Configuration. In the vSphere Advanced Settings, set:

 config.mksdevproxy.enable = true

There are a number of other Advanced Settings which can be configured in vSphere to tune the remote console according to your usage pattern, as documented in TechDocs: Manage the VMware Remote Console Proxy Settings.
Here are some example values for these settings::

config.mksdevproxy.connLimit = 100
config.mksdevproxy.readthrottler = 0
config.mksdevproxy.writethrottler = 0

These values depend on the environmental use. Consult the documentation above and adapt to the expected usage.

 

Workaround 2: Disable the Console Proxy in Aria Automation

1. Open a browser and go to the Configuration properties page at https://<Aria_AUTOMATION_FQDN>/automation/#/service/automation-ui/provisioning-ui;ash=%2FconfigurationProperties
2. On the Configuration properties page, click +NEW
3. Create a new property with the following values:
   key: remote.console.proxy.webmks.enabled
   value: false
      
      Note: Do not enable the property using the toggle after creating the property, as that will change it to true instead of false