Service Broker: Custom form fails to load data after server minutes with error "Some data cannot be retrieved."

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

When starting a new request in Automation -> Service Broker, a custom form may appear as loading for several minutes before failing with the below error message:

"Some data cannot be retrieved. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator. Failed request: [VRO_ACTION].;
Some data cannot be retrieved. If the problem persists, contact your system administrator. Failed request: [VRO_ACTION].;
..."

Environment

Aria Automation 8.18.x.

Cause

The form service has a timeout limit of only a few minutes.

If a custom form is loading data from external sources (E.g. Orchestrator), the data must be obtained quickly or the form page will timeout with the above error message.

Checking the Orchestrator logfile /services-logs/prelude/vco-app/file-logs/vco-server-app.log, we can see how long each action took to complete in the below example log-entry:

INFO vco [host='vco-app-########-####' thread='syncActionExecutor-##' user='#####' org='########-####-####-####-########' trace='-'] {} ch.dunes.scripting.server.script.DynamicFunction - End of action '[VRO_ACTION]', completed for: 120000 ms

In this case, the above action took 120 seconds (2 minutes) to complete.

Resolution

Modify any slow-running custom actions to reduce their runtime.