Array manager under SRM fails to configure with a error message “ Invalid XML passed to SRA (No ‘username’ Node found)”

I would certainly keep this post small and simple. Recently I encountered this issue on one of our customer’s environment. Customer was using Dell compellent storage (16.3.10.127 SRA version) with SRM 6.5 installed.

It was an existing environment which was upgraded from previous version and post the successful upgrade customer witnessed the array manager had a warning message and it clearly stated in the summary page with the below error message.

Ping Failed

SRA command ‘discoverArrays’ failed

Invalid XML passed to SRA (No ‘username’ Node found)

Customer had already raised a support case with Dell and Dell did their initial analysis and informed the issue is lying at the VMware front. So here we are on a bridge with the storage vendor.

Since SRM logs were not giving us much information, With vendor’s assistance we pulled out the compellent logs and found the below traces.

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″ ?>

<Response xmlns=”http://www.vmware.com/srm/sra/v2″ xmlns:compellent=”http://www.compellent.com/srm/sra/v2″>

<Error code=”1002″>

<compellent:Node>Username</compellent:Node>

</Error>

</Response>

The Node parameter should ideally display the actual username for eg admin.

At this point since high level troubleshooting was already performed, Guess what? we started going through the basics to validate if we were missing any parameters under array manager.

When going through the array manager at the interface where it prompts for Storage IP and credentials we had an additional parameter called storage filter which had couple of ID specified.

When verified about the storage filter neither the customer nor Dell was sure if this parameter was needed as it was optional.

Storage filters are used in order to filter out any specific replicated LUN by SRA during device discovery as per my understanding.

Since they certainly did not have any LUN specific as such we went ahead and got rid of the values specified under storage filter and reconfigure the array manager.

We were successfully able to get past the issue and array manager was configured successfully. The solution certainly did not explain if it was completely logical as storage filter should not block any of the parameters, But writing this blog post to ensure if any one encounters this issue he can certainly perform this alternative.

In my case Dell informed they will further troubleshoot this case and raise a bug if needed.

In one of the other case where EMC had encountered this similar issue they ended up updating the replication software which fixed the issue.

As I mentioned earlier just a informative post to ensure people are aware about this issue.

Hope this article was helpful. Watch out for more.