Flow Details Missing in Visualization Tab and Security Segmentation Report Fails to Generate in SSP

Products

• VMware vDefend Firewall with Advanced Threat Prevention
• VMware vDefend Firewall

Issue/Introduction

 

• In the Visualization tab of Security Services Platform (SSP), group names are visible but no flow details are displayed.

• Green flow lines between groups are missing.

• No filters were applied, but still no traffic flow data appeared.

• When generating a Security Segmentation Report, the operation fails with a timeout error.

• Deleting the redis-cluster or viz pods does not resolve the issue.

• No metrics delivery failure alarms were observed in the system.

• When you login to SSP-Installer CLI and check for pod status, you may see the spark-app-rawflow-driver pod missing

  k -n nsxi-platform get pods | grep spark-app-rawflow-driver

 

Environment

Security Services Platform(SSP) 5.0

Cause

• If the worker or control plane nodes hosting SSP components are recreated, certain internal service dependencies (used for flow analytics and visualization) to lose synchronization.

• Specifically, the Spark operator which is responsible for flow data processing may not functioning correctly after node recreation, resulting in missing flow visualization and report generation failures.

Resolution

 

• Restart the Spark Operator pod in the SSP namespace.

  1. Login to the SSP-Installer VM using root credentials

  2. Run the following to identify your Spark Operator pod:

  k get pods -n nsxi-platform | grep spark-operator

  3. Delete the Spark Operator pod (it will automatically respawn):

  k delete pod <spark-operator-pod-name-that-you-noted-from-above> -n nsxi-platform

  4. Now check if you see spark-app-rawflow-driver pod

  k -n nsxi-platform get pods | grep spark-app-rawflow-driver

• Once restarted, verify that:

  • The Visualization tab now displays flow lines and traffic details between groups.

  • The Security Segmentation Report can be generated successfully.