Adapter property changes in Aria Operations are overwritten or reverted after service restarts or Cloud Proxy reboots.

Products

• VCF Operations
• VMware Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations) 8.x
• VMware vRealize Operations 8.x

Issue/Introduction

In VMware Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations), manual modifications to adapter property files (e.g., NSXT.properties) on Cloud Proxies or Remote Collectors are lost after a service restart or reboot.

Symptoms:

• Changes such as SKIP_NEGATIVE_STATS_FOR_ROUTER=false disappear from /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/inbound/<AdapterName>/conf/*.properties.

• Backup files (e.g., .bak) created within the plugin directory are also deleted.

• The file appears to be rolled back to default values or overwritten by a version from the Primary (Master) node.

Environment

 

• Product: VMware Aria Operations / vRealize Operations

• Version: 8.x, 9.x

• Component: Cloud Proxy (CP), Remote Collector (RC), Adapter Plugins

 

Cause

Aria Operations utilizes a Centralized Configuration Sync Mechanism. The Primary (Master) node acts as the "Source of Truth" for adapter configurations. When a Cloud Proxy or Remote Collector service restarts, it synchronizes its local plugin configurations with the Primary node. Any local changes not present on the Primary node are overwritten during this synchronization process to ensure cluster-wide consistency.

Resolution

To ensure adapter configuration changes persist across restarts and are propagated correctly throughout the cluster, the modification must be initiated from the Primary node.

Follow these steps in order:

1. Modify the Primary Node: Log in to the Primary (Master) Node via SSH and edit the target property file in the relevant plugin directory.

   • Example Path: /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/inbound/NSXTAdapter3/conf/NSXT.properties

2. Restart Services on Primary: Restart the collector service on the Primary node to commit the changes locally.

3. Trigger Remote Sync: Restart the services on the Cloud Proxies or Remote Collectors. Upon startup, these nodes will pull the updated configuration from the Primary node.

4. Verification: Confirm the changes are now present in the property files on the Cloud Proxy nodes.

Additional Information

• Creating backup files within the /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/ directory is not recommended, as the sync process cleans up unrecognized files.

• For Large-Scale environments, ensure the Primary node's services are fully "Online" before restarting Cloud Proxies to prevent sync timeouts.

• If the option is applicable online, apply the changes to the properties file on the node collecting the adapter data (CP/RC). Simultaneously, apply the same changes to the Primary (Master) node. This allows the configuration to be applied while the system is online, and ensures that the settings on the collecting node (CP/RC) persist without being reverted during future reboots or service restarts.
  

  • CP/RC node: Modify /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/inbound/<AdapterName>/conf/*.properties (for options applicable online).

     

  • Master node: Apply the same modifications to /usr/lib/vmware-vcops/user/plugins/inbound/<AdapterName>/conf/*.properties as applied above.