DavidRing.ie

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 5.2 introduces an in-product mechanism in SDDC Manager that allows customers to perform inventory version synchronization for key products, including:

• ESXi
• vCenter Server
• NSX
• VxRail

This enhancement provides automatic in-product recovery for environments that become out-of-sync due to out-of-band (OOB) patching, eliminating the need for manual inventory synchronization using ApTool. This enhancement ensures that product versions in the VCF inventory accurately reflect the actual deployed environment, improving lifecycle management. As part of the default automated daily 3:00 AM cron job or during on-demand prechecks, SDDC Manager now automatically detects and reconciles inventory mismatches, significantly reducing operational overhead and enhancing the overall upgrade and patching experience.

Scheduled Cron Job

By default a scheduled daily cron job runs at 3:00 AM server time to sync the inventory versions of managed products on the SDDC Manager appliance. Auto-reconciliation is triggered immediately if any deviation is detected during the scheduled sync.
This ensures that the versions recorded in the SDDC Manager inventory reflect the actual state of the deployed environment. You can monitor the status and logs of the inventory sync process in the following log file:

/var/log/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/operationsmanager.log

cat /var/log/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/operationsmanager.log | grep "inventory sync:"

cat /var/log/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/operationsmanager.log | grep "Inventory Sync"

Inventory version synchronization can fail on a daily basis due to other operations scheduled for the same time. How to modify inventory version synchronization cron job schedule in a VCF environment?:

1.In a text editor, open the file /etc/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/application.properties and go to the end of the file
   vi /etc/vmware/vcf/operationsmanager/application.properties

2.Add/Change the following entry to the file with the desired cron job schedule (the following example is for 9 AM server time)
   inventory.version.sync.interval=0 0 9 * * ?

Source VMware KB: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/311975/how-to-modify-inventory-version-synchron.html

ON-Demand Precheck

On-demand precheck will be extended to validate if the VCF inventory is out of sync. For the management domain, the whole VCF inventory will be validated, to ensure that SDDC Manager is compatible with other domain’s products. For VI domains, along with the validated domain, the domains that share NSX-T with it would also be validated (if such are present).

Manual Sync

After an out-of-band update has been made in a VCF environment. If the system has not automatically synchronized the versions of the products, manual version synchronization can be performed through the provided public APIs.

1. SSH to SDDC Manager with vcf and su to root.
   
2. Generate access token:
   TOKEN=$(curl -X POST -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"username": "<ssoUsername>","password": "<ssoPassword>"}' http://localhost/v1/tokens | jq -r '.accessToken')
   
   Note: Token created remains valid for one hour.
   
3. Invoke version synchronization API with desired request payload
   curl -X POST -H 'Content-type: application/json' -H 'Accept: application/json' -H "Authorization: Bearer $TOKEN" http://localhost/v1/resources/version-syncs -d '{"resourceType":"SYSTEM"}'
   
4. Workflow execution status can be observed from the task panel in the SDDC Manager UI

Note: Token created in step 2 remains valid for one hour.

Workaround: Wait for the daily version synchronization to synchronize the inventory versions after the out-of-band update.

Source VMware KB: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=97577