Aria Operations for Logs agents not sending data due to disabled central configuration

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

In Aria Operations for Logs, a specific agent may appear with an Active status in the product UI but fail to transmit events or log data to the server.

You may observe the following symptoms:

• Under Configuration > Agents, the status of a specific virtual machine is shown as Active, yet the Received Events count remains at 0.

• Within the Agent Details view, the Configurable status for the affected agent is displayed as No.

• Consequently, any Agent Group configurations defined on the server are not applied to the local agent on the host.

Environment

Aria Operations for Logs 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs because the central_config parameter is disabled in the local agent configuration file (liagent.ini).

When central_config is set to no, the agent operates in a standalone mode and ignores any configuration instructions, log filters, or destination groups assigned by the Aria Operations for Logs server. This results in the agent having no instructions on what logs to collect or where to send them.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must manually enable the central configuration setting on the host where the agent is installed.

For Windows Agents:

• Log in to the affected Windows server with administrative privileges.
• Navigate to the following directory:

     %ProgramData%\VMware\Log Insight Agent

• Open the liagent.ini file using a text editor (e.g., Notepad).
• Locate the [server] section and find the following parameter:

     central_config=no

• Change the value to yes:

     central_config=yes

• Save the file.
• Open the Services snap-in (services.msc) and restart the Aria Operations for Logs Agent service.

For Linux Agents:

• Log in to the Linux host as root or a user with sudo privileges.
• Open the configuration file located at:

     /var/lib/loginsight-agent/liagent.ini

• Update the central_config parameter:

     central_config=yes

• Save the file and restart the agent service:

     service liagentd restart

Once the service restarts, the Configurable status in the Aria Operations for Logs UI should change to Yes. The agent will then pull the assigned Agent Group configurations and begin transmitting events.

Additional Information

For more details on centralized configuration, refer to the Aria Operations for Logs Documentation.