Aria operations upgrade hung up on step 8 of 14 for an extended period of time

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

Upgrading VMware Aria Operations takes an excessively long time, often exceeding 4 hours to complete. Reviewing the upgrade logs reveals severe repository synchronization timeouts, specifically returning the following string: Error: Failed to synchronize cache for repo 'VMware Photon Linux 5.0 (x86_64) Snapshot for Updates'

Environment

VMware Aria Operations 8.18.x

Cause

The local network is restricting access to the Broadcom Photon OS package repository. The appliance continuously attempts to reach the unreachable external repository, resulting in extended timeouts that severely delay the overall upgrade process.

Resolution

To resolve the extended upgrade duration, perform one of the following actions:

1. Modify network firewall rules to allow outbound access from the Aria Operations nodes to the required Broadcom Photon OS repositories.

2. Alternatively, disable the Photon OS repository within the appliance OS prior to the upgrade to bypass the synchronization attempt entirely:
   
   Run the following commands on the Aria operations primary node CLI:
   
   cd /etc/yum.repos.d/
sed -i 's/enabled=1/enabled=0/g' *