Disks appear missing in Aria Automation 8.x deployment but exist within vCenter

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

In a VMware Aria Automation deployment, you may observe that a disk component becomes desynchronized from its actual state in vCenter Server. The primary symptom is a red 'X' appearing next to the disk component in the deployment topology view.

If any update action is performed on the deployment (such as a plan update), the sync process may cause the disk component with the red 'X' to be removed entirely from the deployment view. In some cases, the disk may be missing from the deployment from the outset without ever showing a red 'X'.

In all scenarios, inspecting the corresponding virtual machine directly in vCenter Server will confirm that the disk is still present and correctly attached.

Environment

VMware Aria Automation 8.x (specifically observed in 8.17.0 and 8.18.1)

Cause

This issue is caused by a logic flaw within the datacenter enumeration process in VMware Aria Automation. During this process, a cleanup task incorrectly identifies and deletes the state records for recently attached disks. The logic fails to check the disk's creation timestamp against the enumeration start time. If a disk is created after an enumeration has started, its record in the vRA database may be prematurely deleted before the disk device is fully collected from vCenter, leading to the inconsistency and the symptoms described above.

Resolution

This is a known issue that is resolved in VMware Aria Automation 8.18.1 Patch 4 and will be included in future major releases, including VCF 9.

To resolve this issue, please upgrade your environment to version 8.18.1 Patch 4 or a later version once it becomes available. Currently, there is no workaround for this issue.