Upgrade prechecks fail with HTTP 401 Unauthorized when upgrading from 9.1.0.0#00 to 9.1.0.0#00 in VCF Operations

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

During an upgrade of VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) Operations, prechecks fail, preventing progress from version 9.1.0.0100 to 9.1.0.0400.

The following error message is displayed during the ops_precheck step (Stage Precheck Binaries, or Run Component Upgrade Prechecks can fail with the same error):

An unexpected error occurred in step ops_precheck. Reference Code: ########. Please contact support with this reference code. Detail: 401 401: HTTP Status 401 – Unauthorized

Environment

VCF Operations 9.1

Cause

The issue is caused by a legacy VCF 9.0 Fleet Management Appliance that remains powered on. This legacy appliance attempts to access VCF Operations using an outdated password for the lcm-ops account. The resulting authentication failures trigger the 401 Unauthorized error during the upgrade precheck process.

Logs located at casa/web-app/localhost_access_log.<date>.txt on the target VCF Operations Appliance node  will show repeated entries similar to: <FLEET_MGMT_IP> - - "DELETE /casa/authorize HTTP/1.1" 401 437 1868

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the legacy 9.0 Fleet Management Appliance must be decommissioned as it is no longer required for VCF 9.1 operations.

1. Identify the virtual machine corresponding to the VCF 9.0 Fleet Management Appliance in the vCenter Server inventory.
2. Power off the VCF 9.0 Fleet Management Appliance.
3. Log in to the VCF SDDC Manager / Operations interface.
4. Re-try the upgrade prechecks.

Additional Information

For further details on the decommissioning process during upgrades, refer to the Broadcom Tech Docs: Upgrading to VCF Operations 9.1