vSphere with Tanzu using NSX-T - Part16 - Troubleshooting content library related issues

In this article, we will take a look at troubleshooting some of the content library related issues that you may encounter while managing/ administering vSphere with Tanzu clusters.

Case 1:  

TKC (guest K8s cluster) deployments failing as VMs were not getting deployed. You can see Failed to deploy OVF package error in the VC UI. This was due to error A general system error occurred: HTTP request error: cannot authenticate SSL certificate for host wp-content.vmware.com while syncing content library.

 

 

Following is a sample log for this issue from the vmop-controller-manger:

Warning CreateFailure 5m29s (x26 over 50m) vmware-system-vmop/vmware-system-vmop-controller-manager-85484c67b7-9jncl/virtualmachine-controller deploy from content library failed for image "ob-19344082-tkgs-ova-ubuntu-2004-v1.21.6---vmware.1-tkg.1": POST https://sc2-01-vcxx.xx.xxxx.com:443/rest/com/vmware/vcenter/ovf/library-item/id:8b34e422-cc30-4d44-9d78-367528df0622?~action=deploy: 500 Internal Server Error

This can be resolved by just editing the content library and accepting new certificate thumbprint.

 

Case 2: 

Missing TKRs. Even though CL is present in the VC and will have all required OVF Templates, on the supervisor cluster TKR resources will be missing/ not found.

❯ kubectl get tkr
No resources found

This could happen if there are duplicate content libraries present in the VC with same Subscription URL. If you find duplicate CLs, try removing them. If there are CLs that are not being used, consider deleting them. Also, try synchronize the CL.

If this doesn't resolve the issue, try to delete and recreate the CL, and make sure you select the newly created CL under Cluster > Configure > Supervisor Cluster > General > Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Service > Content Library.

You may also verify the vmware-system-vmop-controller-manager pod logs and capw-controller-manager pod logs. Check if those pods are running, or getting continuously restarted. If required you may restart those pods.

Case 3:  

TKC deployments failing as VMs were not getting deployed. Sample vmop-controller-manger logs given below:

E0803 18:51:30.638787       1 vmprovider.go:155] vsphere "msg"="Clone VirtualMachine failed" "error"="deploy from content library failed for image \"ob-18900476-photon-3-k8s-v1.21.6---vmware.1-tkg.1.b3d708a\": deploy error: The operation failed due to An error occurred during host configuration." "vmName"="rkatz-testmigrationvm5/gc-lab-control-plane-kxwn2"

E0803 18:51:30.638821       1 virtualmachine_controller.go:660] VirtualMachine "msg"="Provider failed to create VirtualMachine" "error"="deploy from content library failed for image \"ob-18900476-photon-3-k8s-v1.21.6---vmware.1-tkg.1.b3d708a\": deploy error: The operation failed due to An error occurred during host configuration." "name"="rkatz-testmigrationvm5/gc-lab-control-plane-kxwn2"

E0803 18:51:30.638851       1 virtualmachine_controller.go:358] VirtualMachine "msg"="Failed to reconcile VirtualMachine" "error"="deploy from content library failed for image \"ob-18900476-photon-3-k8s-v1.21.6---vmware.1-tkg.1.b3d708a\": deploy error: The operation failed due to An error occurred during host configuration." "name"="rkatz-testmigrationvm5/gc-lab-control-plane-kxwn2"

E0803 18:51:30.639301       1 controller.go:246] controller "msg"="Reconciler error" "error"="deploy from content library failed for image \"ob-18900476-photon-3-k8s-v1.21.6---vmware.1-tkg.1.b3d708a\": deploy error: The operation failed due to An error occurred during host configuration." "controller"="virtualmachine" "name"="gc-lab-control-plane-kxwn2" "namespace"="rkatz-testmigrationvm5" "reconcilerGroup"="vmoperator.xxxx.com" "reconcilerKind"="VirtualMachine"

This could be resolved by restarting the cm-inventory service on all nsx-t manager nodes. Following are the commands to restart cm-inventory service on NSX-T manager nodes:

get service cm-inventory  
restart service cm-inventory

Case 4: 

Sometimes in the WCP K8s layer you will notice some stale contentsources object entries. Contentsources are the corresponding objects of content libraries in K8s layer. Due to some reasons/ requirements you might have created multiple content libraries, and you may have delete some of them at later point of time from the vCenter, but they may not be removed properly from the WCP K8s layer and thats how these stale contentsources objects are found. You can use PowerCLI to list the current content libraries present in the VC, compare it with the contentsources and remove the stale entries.

> Get-ContentLibrary | select Name,Id | fl

Name : wdc-01-vc18c01-wcp
Id   : 17209f4b-3f7f-4bcb-aeaf-fd0b53b66d0d

> kg contentsources
NAME                                   AGE
0f00d3fa-de54-4630-bc99-aa13ccbe93db   173d
17209f4b-3f7f-4bcb-aeaf-fd0b53b66d0d   321d
451ce3f3-49d7-47d3-9a04-2839c5e5c662   242d
75e0668c-0cdc-421e-965d-fd736187cc57   173d
818c8700-efa4-416b-b78f-5f22e9555952   173d
9abbd108-aeb3-4b50-b074-9e6c00473b02   173d
a6cd1685-49bf-455f-a316-65bcdefac7cf   173d
acff9a91-0966-4793-9c3a-eb5272b802bd   242d
fcc08a43-1555-4794-a1ae-551753af9c03   173d

In the above sample case you can see multiple contentsource objects, but there is only one content library. So you can delete all the contentsource objects, except 17209f4b-3f7f-4bcb-aeaf-fd0b53b66d0d.

Hope it was useful. Cheers!