VMware Cloud Foundation Download Tool: Failed to get last updated time for HCL

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

• The VMware Cloud Foundation Download Tool fails to download binaries. The tool successfully connects to the depot and creates local folder structures. It terminates with a failure during the vSAN Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) download phase. You see the following error in the command-line output:

ERROR: Failed to get last updated time for HCL

• The log file /<VMware Cloud Foundation Download Tool>/log/vdt.log shows a null pointer exception when the tool attempts to establish the HTTP route.
  
  YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.975+0000 [main] ERROR [com.vmware.evo.sddc.lcm.vsanhcl.download.VsanHclDownloadServiceImpl]  Failed to get last updated time for HCL with exception: Failed to process fetched last update time of HCL with exception Cannot invoke "org.apache.hc.client5.http.RouteInfo.getTargetHost()" because the return value of "org.apache.hc.client5.http.protocol.HttpClientContext.getHttpRoute()" is null
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.018+0000 [main] DEBUG [com.vmware.evo.sddc.lcm.tools.bundletransferv2.telemetry.TelemetryFileUtil]  Is CEIP enabled: false
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS.021+0000 [main] ERROR [com.vmware.evo.sddc.lcm.tools.bundletransferv2.exceptionhandler.ExecutionExceptionHandler]  Application failed.
com.vmware.evo.sddc.lcm.model.error.LcmException: Failed to get last updated time for HCL

Caused by: com.vmware.vcf.vsan.error.HclClientException: Failed to process fetched last update time of HCL with exception Cannot invoke "org.apache.hc.client5.http.RouteInfo.getTargetHost()" because the return value of "org.apache.hc.client5.http.protocol.HttpClientContext.getHttpRoute()" is null
        at com.vmware.vcf.vsan.hclclient.HclClient.getLastUpdatedTime(HclClient.java:151)
        at com.vmware.evo.sddc.lcm.vsanhcl.download.VsanHclDownloadServiceImpl.getLastUpdated(VsanHclDownloadServiceImpl.java:78)
        ... 24 common frames omitted


• To isolate whether these endpoint URLs are able  to  download "vsan-hcl-all.json" 
  • vsanhealth.vmware.com
  • eapi.broadcom.com
    
    curl -L -H "x-vmw-esp-clientid:VCF-B1B0D465-4D2D-4AE9-9A34-C335C81218B5-SEP-2024" --retry-all-errors --fail --retry 5 --retry-delay 5 --connect-timeout 30 --continue-at - --max-time 900 -w "%{http_code}" -o "vsan-hcl-all.json" "https://<endpoint_url>/products/v1/bundles/all"

Environment

VCF 9.x

Cause

An endpoint URL configuration prevents the tool from determining the network route to the vSAN Hardware Compatibility List attributes.

Resolution

Update the endpoint URLs based on the validation to ensure the tool resolves the network route and establishes a valid connection.

1. Navigate to the configuration directory /home/vcf/vcf-download-tool/conf/
2. Open the application-prod.properties file in a text editor.
   ...
   #### HCL download properties ####
   vsan.hcl.client.endpoint=vsanhealth.vmware.com
   ...
3. Update the existing vsanhealth.vmware.com endpoint value to eapi.broadcom.com
4. Save and close the file.
5. Open the application-prodV2.properties file.
   ...
   #### HCL download properties ####
   vsan.hcl.client.endpoint=vsanhealth.vmware.com
   ...
6. Update the existing vsanhealth.vmware.com endpoint value to eapi.broadcom.com
7. Save and close the file.

Retry vcf download tool to download the binaries.