Analytics Dashboards Not Appearing Due to JDBC SSL Error | PKIX path building

Products

• CA Automic Workload Automation - Automation Engine
• CA Automic One Automation

Issue/Introduction

After setting up Analytics dashboards and confirming the IA Agent is running, the dashboards do not appear in AWI (Automic Web Interface). The Analytics logs show JDBC errors related to establishing a secure connection to the MS SQL Server database.

The following or similar error messages are found in the Analytics logs:

Caused by: com.microsoft.sqlserver.jdbc.SQLServerException: The driver could not establish a secure connection to SQL Server by using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. Error: "PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target".

Caused by: javax.net.ssl.SSLHandshakeException: PKIX path building failed: sun.security.provider.certpath.SunCertPathBuilderException: unable to find valid certification path to requested target

Cause

The error indicates a problem with SSL/TLS certificate trust between the Analytics backend (which uses Java) and the SQL Server database. The Java runtime environment does not trust the certificate presented by the database server, leading to an SSL Handshake Failure (SunCertPathBuilderException).

Resolution

The issue can be resolved by configuring the JDBC connection string to bypass certificate validation for the server, which is acceptable in some internal environments where mutual trust is established and traffic is secured.

1. Modify the JDBC Connection String:

   • Locate the applications.properties file for the Analytics backend configuration.

   • Find the External data sources section which contains the JDBC connection string for your Automic SQL Server database.

   • Append the parameter trustServerCertificate=true to the existing connection string.

   Example: Your connection string might look something like: jdbc:sqlserver://[ServerName]:[Port];databaseName=[DBName];

   Modified String: jdbc:sqlserver://[ServerName]:[Port];databaseName=[DBName];**trustServerCertificate=true**

2. Verify JDBC Driver:

   • Ensure the JDBC driver being used is compatible with the Java version that the Analytics backend is running on.

   • Typically, the correct driver can be found in the Automation Engine /bin/lib directory, as the Analytics backend usually uses a matching Java version.

After implementing this change and restarting the Analytics service, the Analytics dashboards should begin to appear in AWI.