Properties inherited from custom groups in Aria Operations are not applied

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

• Custom attribute values are inconsistently applied to VMs in Aria Operations when they move between custom groups.
• When a VM moves from one group to another, the custom attribute sometimes gets stuck at the "reset" value of the source group instead of inheriting the value of the new group.

Environment

Aria Operations 8.18.x

Cause

When a VM leaves one custom group and joins another, and both groups are configured to set the same custom property, the "set property" tasks are placed on an asynchronous queue. There is no mechanism to enforce a specific order of execution for these tasks, leading to a race condition and unpredictable attribute assignments.

Resolution

• Apply custom attributes to predecessor objects (like hosts) that are less likely to change membership, and then use inheritance in views to retrieve these values. This avoids issues with frequently fluctuating group memberships and asynchronous operations on VMs.
• Deleting custom properties from VM objects is not possible without deleting the entire object; setting the property to a default value like '-1' is suggested for cleanup.

Additional Information

References:

• Managing Custom Object Groups in VMware Aria Operations
• Custom Object Groups Workspace to Create a New Group