After updating an environment to VMware View 5.1, I noticed a repeating set of errors showing up in the task list every 10 minutes or so with a status of “A general system error has occurred” for the task “Update option values”. The error itself is mysterious and vague, basically telling me that something is trying to update an option value on the hosts but is failing.

Looking into the vpxa.log file on a host, I see this particular message that correlates to the error:

--> Result:
--> (vmodl.fault.SystemError) {
--> dynamicType = <unset>,
--> faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
--> reason = "",
--> msg = "A general system error occurred: ",
--> }
--> Args:
-->
--> Arg changedValue:
--> (vim.option.OptionValue) [
--> (vim.option.OptionValue) {
--> dynamicType = <unset>,
--> key = "CBRC.Enable",
--> value = false,
--> }
--> ]

I thought this was weird, as I have CBRC (Content Based Read Cache) disabled from within the View 5.1 Administrator configuration. Some details on CBRC can be found on MyVirtualCloud (here) and the VMware EUC blog (here).

Fixing The Error

Based on the log entry, it seems like the task was trying to disable an option that is already disabled (notice the changeValue is to value = false).

So, to test, I manually set the option value to true on a few hosts by checking the box. The option value is found in:

Host > Configuration Tab > Software Menu > Advanced Settings > CBRC

After enabling the option, I found that the “update option values” tasks, which has been failing with a general system error, began to succeed and finally stop showing up. Surely enough, when I checked the advanced settings again, the option for CBRC was disabled.

Something to be aware of if you’re doing an update to 5.1 or turning on/off CBRC and notice a bunch of general system errors afterwards.

Root Cause Analysis

I later checked and found that a replica connection server was installed running View 5.0, while the original connection server was installed with View 5.1. I would guess that this had something to do with the conflict, or at least triggered the option code errors. Due diligence always pays off 🙂