Troubleshooting for E150004/E138001 Errors when using AWS ALB with WCC

Products

• Autosys Workload Automation

Issue/Introduction

When accessing CA WCC through an AWS Application Load Balancer (ALB), users may encounter the following errors even if basic connectivity is established:

• E150004: An error occurred during authentication. Authentication between CA WCC and EEM failed.
• E138001: There was an error trying to load the page (often occurring when expanding nodes or boxes in QuickView).

Environment

WCC 12.x , 24.x

Cause

These issues are typically related to session persistence (stickiness) and header handling between the AWS ALB and the backend WCC Tomcat instances.

1. Session Drops: WCC is stateful. If a request is routed to a node that does not hold the user's session, authentication fails.
2. Stickiness Type: Using "Application-based cookies" (like JSESSIONID) can be unreliable during the login transition when Tomcat regenerates the session ID.
3. Invalid Headers: Standard AWS ALB configurations may drop headers that WCC requires for processing specific UI interactions, leading to NullPointerExceptions on the backend.

Resolution

Follow these steps to ensure the AWS ALB is correctly configured for WCC:

1. Configure Sticky Sessions (The Golden Rule)

In the AWS Management Console, navigate to your Target Group attributes:

• Enable Stickiness: Ensure stickiness is turned ON.
• Stickiness Type: Switch the type to 'Load balancer generated cookie' (e.g., AWSALB). This is more resilient than application-based cookies for WCC's session handling during login.

2. Adjust ALB Target Group Attributes

Specific header handling is required to prevent E138001 errors during UI interactions (like expanding box trees):

• Navigate to the Attributes tab of your WCC Target Group.
• Ensure that 'Drop invalid headers' is unchecked. WCC may use headers that the ALB otherwise flags as invalid, causing the backend to receive null data.

3. Client-Side Validation

If users still see errors after the infrastructure change:

• Instruct affected users to clear their browser cookies and cache.
• This forces the browser to drop any 'confused' session state and acquire a fresh, properly stuck session from the ALB.