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vCloud Automation Center 6.x Time Bomb Issues

December 10, 2014 by Leave a Comment

As I know quite few of my vCloud Automation Center 6.x (lately renamed to vRealize Automation) customers are following my blog, I wanted to share this important information of a two different time bombs issues that affect the 6.x releases of the product.  The purpose of this post is to highlight these two time bomb issues and the simple changes required to avoid them affecting the availability & manageability of your vCAC environment. If you have not done this or not sure if it was done during the installation time, please take the time to do it now. It is worth checking even if your environment was setup by a vCAC expert as it might have not been known during the the time your setup was installed:

1- vCAC 6.x VAMI Root account time bomb.

In vCAC 6.x There is a one year expiration time bomb in the VAMI Root account. This will prevent you from logging in to the VAMI consoles. To fix run this command…

# chage –M 99999 root

 This will change the timeout  and should prevent future issues. This occurs in both the vCAC Identity Appliance , and the vCAC Appliance.

2- vCAC 6.x SSO internal tenant admin password  time bomb.

In this particular issue, after setting up vCAC and setting up your tenants and connect it to particular identity source and provide permissions to tenant admins and users and things happily working as expected for the first 90 days.  After 90 days, you will discover that you cannot login to any tenant using your tenant admin or tenant user credentials while you are sure these credentials are correct, you would receive an error similar to the below screenshot:

vCAC Tenant Admin Time Bomb

 This issue occurs due to expiry of Tenant admins/users passwords after 90 days.  By default, the SSO internal tenant admin password expires in 90 days. This password expiration value can be changed or password expiration disabled. After the password expires, the authentication server cannot log in with the old password.

Note: This issue is internal to vRealize related SSO authentication and does not affect external OpenLDAP, Active Directory, or other LDAP configurations.

Note: The current workflow User Interface does not provide any notification when the password is to expire.

Note: This particular time bomb issue has been resolved in 6.1 and above as long you are doing a fresh install, but it persist if you are doing in place upgrade. 

The full resolution action has been documented in KB 2075011, where I have included a copy of this instruction in here for completion and easy access:
To work around this issue, disable password expiration for the tenant admin account.

Note: If you are not sure about performing the steps below, file a support request with VMware Technical Support and note this Knowledge Base article ID (2075011) in the problem description. For more information on filing a Support Request, see Filing a Support Request in My VMware (2006985).

VMware vRealize Automation using vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) for tenant authentication

If VMware vRealize Automation is using vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) for tenant authentication, perform these steps to disable password expiration:

Note: Replace tenant_name with the URL name of your tenant.

  1. Open an SSH connection to vCenter Server.
  2. Disable password expiration by running this command:/opt/likewise/bin/ldapmodify -H ldap://localhost:11711 -x -D "cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=vsphere,dc=local" -W <<EOF
    dn: cn=DCAdmins,cn=builtin,dc=vsphere,dc=local
    changetype: modify
    add: member
    member: cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=tenant_name
    EOF    Response: modifying entry “cn=DCAdmins,cn=builtin,dc=vsphere,dc=local”Note: You are prompted for the administrator@vsphere.local password when running this command.
  3. Run this command to reset the account control flag:/opt/likewise/bin/ldapmodify -H ldap://localhost:11711 -x -D "cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=vsphere,dc=local" -W <<EOF
    dn: cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=tenant_name
    changetype: modify
    replace: userAccountControl
    userAccountControl: 0
    EOF    Response: modifying entry “cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=tenant_name.”Note: You are prompted for the administrator@vsphere.local password when running this command.

 

Using SSO in the VMware vRealize Automation Identity Appliance

If you are using SSO in the VMware vRealize Automation Identity Appliance, perform these steps to disable password expiration:

  1. Download the attached file, kb_2075011_identity_appliance.tar.gz , to your workstation
  2. Using an SCP client, upload kb_2075011_identity_appliance.tar.gz  to /tmp of the VMware vRealize Automation Identity Appliance
  3. Open an SSH connection to the VMware vRealize Automation Identity Appliance.
  4. Navigate to the temp directory on the Identity Appliance by running cd /tmp command.
  5. Extract the contents of kb_2075011_identity_appliance.tar.gz into /tmp by running this command:tar zxvf kb_2075011_identity_appliance.tar.gz
  6. After contents are extracted, execute 0_run_me script on the Identity Appliance :./0_run_me tenant_nameNote: Replace tenant_name with the URL name of your tenant. Use this command as a model:./0_run_me vmware

     

  7. When prompted, enter the password for Administrator@vsphere.local.

 

VMware vRealize Automation using Windows installation of vCenter SSO for tenant authentication

If VMware vRealize Automation is using a Windows installation of vCenter Single Sign-On for tenant authentication, perform these steps to disable password expiration:

  1. Open an elevated command prompt.
  2. Create a temporary directory by running the command:mkdir c:\temp
  3. Change directories by running the command:cd c:\temp
  4. Create the UserAccountControl.ldif file in Notepad by running the command:notepad UserAccountControl.ldif
  5. Copy and paste the content below into the file:dn: cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=tenant_name
    changetype: modify
    replace: userAccountControl
    userAccountControl: 0
    -
    Notes:
    • Replace tenant_name with the URL name of your tenant.
    • Ensure you include the hyphen on the last line. (In other words, do not omit the hyphen.)
  7. Save and close the UserAccountControl.ldif file.
  8. Create the PasswordExpiration.ldif file in Notepad by running the command:notepad PasswordExpiration.ldif
  9. Copy and paste the content below into the file:dn: cn=DCAdmins,cn=builtin,dc=vsphere,dc=local
    changetype: modify
    add: member
    member: cn=administrator,cn=users,dc=tenant_name
    –    Notes:

    • Replace tenant_name with the URL name of your tenant.
    • Ensure you include the hyphen on the last line. (In other words, do not omit the hyphen.)
  10. Save and close the PasswordExpiration.ldif file.
  11. To modify the user account control configuration and password expiration using the files created earlier in this procedure, run these commands:Note: If the ldifde executable is not available, run this command to install:ServerManagerCmd -i RSAT-ADDS-Tools
    Note: ServerManagerCmd has been deprecated, and is not available in Windows Server 2012. For more information, see Microsoft TechNet.The preceding link was correct as of September 18, 2014. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

    1. To modify the password expiration, run the command:ldifde -i -f PasswordExpiration.ldif -s localhost -t 11711 -a "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vsphere,dc=local" *When prompted, enter the password for Administrator@vsphere.local.
    2. To modify the user account control configuration, run the command:ldifde -i -f UserAccountControl.ldif -s localhost -t 11711 -a "cn=Administrator,cn=Users,dc=vsphere,dc=local" *When prompted, enter the password for Administrator@vsphere.local
I hope this help my customers and my readers in general avoid issues caused by these two time bombs.
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