IP Address Missing in Aria Automation Service Broker Due to MAC Address Case Mismatch

Products

• VCF Operations/Automation (formerly VMware Aria Suite)

Issue/Introduction

Virtual machines onboarded or migrated to Aria Automation (formerly vRealize Automation) may fail to display an IP address for Network Adapter 1 in the Service Broker Virtual Machine view. This behavior occurs despite the IP address being correctly assigned in vCenter and reflected in the "Source of Truth." This issue is typically caused by a case-sensitivity mismatch in the MAC address string between the vCenter inventory and the Aria Automation provisioning database, which prevents the data collection service from successfully reconciling the network interface object.

Symptoms:

• IP address missing in Aria Automation Service Broker for onboarded or migrated VMs.
• MAC address appears in uppercase in vCenter configuration and lowercase in Guest OS information.

• In the affected state, the MAC addresses do not match in the Managed Object Browser (MOB) properties:

  • • Under guest.net (GuestInfo), the MAC address is in lowercase.

    • Under config.hardware.device (VirtualDevice), the MAC address is in UPPERCASE.

Environment

• VMware Aria Automation 8.x
• VMware vSphere 7.x / 8.x

Cause

The Aria Automation reconciliation framework relies on exact string matching for network interface objects. A case-sensitivity mismatch between the stored MAC address and the value reported by the vCenter inventory results in a failure to link the IP address state to the virtual machine resource link.

Resolution

Update the hardware configuration in vCenter Server to ensure a uniform MAC address format:

1. Edit the Virtual Machine settings in the vCenter Server inventory.

2. Expand the targeted Network Adapter configuration.

3. Change the MAC Address assignment type from Automatic to Manual.

4. Input the existing MAC address using only lowercase letters.

5. Save the configuration.

6. Verify that the MAC address string is now uniform in the MOB.

7. Wait for a data collection cycle in VMware Aria Automation (24 hours).