Content Library disappears from Inventory

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

The Content Library name as "###" which commonly used for vSphere with Tanzu/VM Service is no longer visible in the vSphere Client inventory.

Automated tasks or scripts attempting to access items in the "###" library fail with "Managed Object Not Found" or "NotAuthenticated" errors.

 

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.x

Cause

Based on log analysis, this issue is typically caused by a manual deletion of the Content Library via the vSphere REST API or the HTML5 vSphere Client.

In this specific case, audit logs confirmed that the com.vmware.content.local_library.delete method was invoked by a user with administrative privileges.
/var/log/vmware/content-library/cls.log
<YYYY-MM-DD>T<time> | INFO | <Opid>-... | DeleteLibraryActivity | deleting content of library (name=###)

/var/log/vmware/vsphere-ui/logs/apigw.log
<YYYY-MM-DD>T<time> [INFO ] nio-127.0.0.1-5090-exec-3358 70194494 114578 200392 AuthnMetadataManagerImpl [opid] Determined the authn context type for com.vmware.content.local_library.delete via com.vmware.content: AuthnMetadata [_authnType=SESSION, _sessionMgrInfo=Optional[SessionManagerInfo [_sessionMgrSvcId=com.vmware.cis.session, _loginOpId=create, _logoutOpId=delete]], _authnTokenType=Optional[SAML]]

Resolution

As the library was deleted by an authenticated administrative action, the only way to restore service is to manually recreate the Content Library.

1. Log in to the vSphere Client.

2. Navigate to Content Libraries.

3. Click Create and name the library.

4. Follow the wizard to select the appropriate storage and subscription settings.

5. If this library is used for vSphere with Tanzu, navigate to the Supervisor Cluster > Workload Management and ensure the new library is associated with the relevant Namespaces.