vCAC integration with vCO 5.5 error

[Aristizabal]

Hello,

My environment has been running vCAC 5.2 and vCO 5.1 without any issues, recently I upgraded the vSphere environment to 5.5 therefore I had to deploy the new 5.5 vCO appliance (the vCO 5.1 appliance doesn't play well with vCenter 5.5). Now I get an error every time vCAC tries to trigger a vCO workflow:

"vCenter Orchestrator workflow 'vcac_integration_vmname' failed with error: Could not reach vCenter Orchestrator endpoint '{0}'. Trying the next highest priority endpoint."

"Machine VCW0156: Failed to Launch Multi-Machine Service: Multi-Machine Service with no components is invalid"

The configuration of the vCO endpoint on vCAC is pretty straight forward and the new vCO appliance is on the same network as the 5.1 one, so no firewalls or anything preventing the communication to happen.

Is anybody aware of problems between these products?, I checked the compatibility matrix and it says the two versions are compatible.

Thanks,

Juan.

[ShibbyB]

I just updated my lab to 5.5 and am trying to build a call to vCO through the workflow designer, I'm getting the same error when I try and browse for workflows "Could not reach vCenter Orchestrator endpoint 0". I had seen that error on 5.1 vCO because the username was specified domain\user in the credentials and putting user@domain resolved the issue. Please update the forum if you resolve the issue.

[Aristizabal]

Thanks for the suggestion, in fact that was the first thing that VMware support tried,unfortunately without success. I'll be posting an update once the issue gets resolved.

[Aristizabal]

According to VMware support vCAC 5.2 is not compatible with vCO 5.5; the problem is due to the location of the APIs, which changed on the latest 5.5 vCO appliance.

To make matters worse I followed this KB: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=205918...  in order to run vCO in a compatibility mode to support the calls from vCAC,  and it ended up messing up vCO completely, so if anybody decides to use it just make sure you take a snapshot of the vCO appliance.

So far the options for me are to somehow install a vCenter 5.5 plugin on vCO 5.1 and add vSphere 5.5 compatibility to vCO, or change the behavior of vCAC to make it work with the new vCO 5.5 API location. VMware support is still investigating the problem, I'll post more information later on.

[mlichsteintwc]

This is caused by the SSO integration. If you disable the vCO SSO integration, this error should go away.

[Aristizabal]

I am not using SSO integration. The problem was the location of the API files that vCAC tries to reach when talking to vCO (they changed on the 5.5 appliance).

So the KB I referenced above is no longer a public KB due to its risk. Anyways, I solved the issue with VMware support by following these steps to change the compatibility mode on the appliance:

1. Take a snapshot of your vCO appliance VM.

2. Log out of the vCO client

3. Stop the vCO server service from the vCO configuration web page.
4. SSH to the vCO appliance and go to /var/lib/vco/app-server/deploy
5. Delete the vco and root folders:

     #rm -r vco/

     #rm -r ROOT/
6. Rename vco.war file to TEMP.war

     #mv vco.war TEMP.war
7. Rename ROOT.war file to vco.war

     #mv ROOT.war vco.war
8. Rename TEMP.war to ROOT.war

     #mv TEMP.war ROOT.war
9. Start the Orchestrator server service from the vCO configuration web page.

10. Wait a minute or two.

11. Verify that you can load the vCO main page at https://vco_server:8281
12. Verify that the you can login to the vCO client
13. Check the connectivity to vCO from vCAC

Juan.

[christianpg]

Very handy info. Did VMware identify your issue as a bug in the vCO 5.5 release?

IMHO: it is, since it breaks the backward compatibility of the API.

Would be interesting to know if they are planning to fix this for future vCO releases or not.

[Aristizabal]

They didn't identify the issue as a bug, but the two product versions are listed as compatible in the interoperability matrix so this is misleading. I hope VMware comes with a fix on vCAC 6.0 so you can specify where the vCO APIs are located.

[ShibbyB]

Thanks for sharing this, seems to be working with my 5.5 vCO appliance using SSO for authentication.

[lnairn]

Hi....i have Orchestrator 5.5 installed on a Windows server, and this worked for me too.

The path to the config files is C:\Program Files\VMware\Orchestrator\app-server\deploy

Regards,

Leandro.

[qc4vmware]

So I am encountering this same error with vCAC 6.0 + vCO 5.5 .  vCO 5.5 is configured to use ldap.  SSO is actually broken in our environment currently so setting it to use SSO would not be an option.  The advanced services seem to work just fine and I have it pointed to the same vCO server.  I am using an external Windows based server not the embedded SSO server that ships with vCAC 6.

[Aristizabal]

Have you tried the steps described above?,  is your vCO url something like this  https://vco_server:8281?

[JamesMW]

I was having this same problem and the steps posted by Aristizabal fixed it for me. vCAC 6.0 and vCO 5.5.

[qc4vmware]

Sorry I missed that in the thread somehow.  I just made the changes and things are working.  Thanks a million guys.  I get so frustrated with crap like this.  I have pounded on VMware to have a bugzilla-ish service that is publicly visible for this kind of stuff.  Clearly this was and still is a bug.  This should work out of the box!  I'm not really even certain what I just did and what I may have put myself at risk at by running in this compatibility mode.  Can anyone comment on that?

[ChristianWehner]

Thanks Juan, this will also work if you are using the vCO 5.5.1 integrated into the vCAC 6.0 appliance.

[qc4vmware]

So it turns out that vCO 5.5 and vCAC 6.0 are compatible out of the box however the url has changed and that is what caused the issue.  In pre 5.5 the url would be https://vocserver:8281 and it is now https://vcoserver:8281/vco .  Argh.  I took 5.5 out of compatibility mode and updated the endpoint url and now it connects fine.

[MicahGaither]

If I'm using the embedded vCO 5.5.1 that comes with vCAC 6, I shouldn't need to enable compatibility mode? Where did you modify the endpoint URL to include '/vco' (i.e., https://vcoserver:8281/vco)? The test connection fails if I enter anything other than just the hostname under Advanced Services -> Server Configuration.

[qc4vmware]

This is when you are setting up an endpoint Infrastructure\Endpoints\Endpoints\New Endpoint\Orchestration\vCenter Orchestrator.

[MicahGaither]

I think my problem is related to using a vCloud Suite license instead of an actual vCAC license. Logged in as an Infrastructure Admin and can only add [Cloud -> vApp] and [Virtual -> vCenter] endpoints.

vCAC 6 Adding a NetApp Endpoint

https://communities.vmware.com/thread/466280

Thank you for your assistance!

[moenster]

This solution also worked for me, using vCAC 6.0 and the vCAC VA embedded vCO.

Same problem as described above, cannot reach vCO endpoint.