Scheduled reports show "No Data" intermittently in VMware Aria Operations

Products

VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite) VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms Scheduled reports in VMware Aria Operations intermittently generate without data, displaying "No Data" in charts or trend views.

Adapter instances remain in a healthy Collecting state.
Manual report generation may succeed while scheduled runs fail.

The reporting logs on the affected node contain the following error:

${generalPattern} reporting ${structuredData} - Error render PDF:
java.lang.RuntimeException: Socket factory failed
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.PdfRenderer$ServiceRequester.<init>(PdfRenderer.java:677)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.PdfRenderer.<init>(PdfRenderer.java:71)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.PdfRenderer.getInstance(PdfRenderer.java:48)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ChromeServiceProxy.renderPdf(ChromeServiceProxy.java:246)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ChromeServiceProxy.generateSinglePdf(ChromeServiceProxy.java:161)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ChromeServiceProxy.generateSinglePdf(ChromeServiceProxy.java:133)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ReportRenderer.getExternalPdf(ReportRenderer.java:542)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ReportRenderer.addDashboardPages(ReportRenderer.java:778)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ReportRenderer.createReportTemplate(ReportRenderer.java:659)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ReportRenderer.renderReport(ReportRenderer.java:421)
        at com.vmware.vcops.bridge.content.server.report.ReportRenderer.run(ReportRenderer.java:250)
        at java.base/java.util.concurrent.Executors$RunnableAdapter.call(Unknown Source)
        at java.base/java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(Unknown Source)
        at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor.runWorker(Unknown Source)
        at java.base/java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(Unknown Source)
        at java.base/java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)
${generalPattern} reporting ${structuredData} - Failed to get PDF file from Chrome for Dashboard Id=<DashBoard ID>
${generalPattern} reporting ${structuredData} - Chrome is unlocked

Environment

Aria Operations 8.18.x

VCF Operations 9.0.x

Cause

The local rendering component (embedded browser engine) fails because internal communications using "localhost" resolve to an IPv6 address by default. This causes a socket factory failure when the system attempts to generate PDF content from dashboards.

Resolution

The issue is fixed in VCF Operations 9.1. See VMware Cloud Foundation 9.1 release notes.

Workaround:

If you are on a version prior to 9.1, disable IPv6 on the appliance nodes. Follow the steps below to workaround the issue

Log in to the VMware Aria Operations nodes (specifically the node where failures occur) via SSH as root.
Disable IPv6 on the appliance. See Disable IPv6 in Aria Operation for detailed steps.
Monitor scheduled report generation to verify the "No Data" symptom is resolved.