Troubleshoot VA Not Displaying in Dashboard Post Deployment

Introduction

This document describes how to troubleshoot a virtual appliance (VA) not displaying in the Umbrella Dashboard after deployment. 

Prerequisites

Requirements

There are no specific requirements for this document.

Components Used

The information in this document is based on Cisco Umbrella.

The information in this document was created from the devices in a specific lab environment. All of the devices used in this document started with a cleared (default) configuration. If your network is live, ensure that you understand the potential impact of any command.

Problem

You have deployed a virtual appliance (VA), but it is not showing up in the Umbrella Dashboard under Deployment  > Configuration > Sites & Active Directory. Additionally, the virtual appliance's console displays the sync process as disabled and that the Updates test has failed, as shown here:

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Tabbing over to the Updates: GET failed test and pressing Enter reveals this information:

GET failed: GET from http://shared.opendns.com:80/enterprise/upgrade/va/mainline/MANIFEST failed: HTTP/1.1 404 Not Found

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Solution

If you are deploying your virtual appliances in VMWare and witness the behavior described earlier, do not make any changes to the OVA file archive or the OVF template included in that archive. Deploy the OVF template exactly as it is shown in the Cisco Umbrella documentation. 

If you are deploying the virtual appliances in Hyper-V, please pay special attention to the section around importing both hard disks as shown in the Cisco Umbrella documentation. 

Cause

The behavior described earlier indicates that the virtual appliances were not deployed according to the existing documentation.

The virtual appliances are downloaded from the Umbrella Dashboard as file archives (.ova for VMWare, .zip for Hyper-V). Extracting from these archives reveals these files:

VMWare:

• forwarder-va.vmdk (hard disk)

• dynamic.vmdk (hard disk)

• forwarder-va.ovf (descriptor file)

• forwarder-va.mf (manifest file)

Hyper-V:

• Virtual Hard Disks\forwarder-va.vhd (hard disk)
• Virtual Hard Disks\dynamic.vhd (hard disk)
• config.xml (configuration file)
• Virtual Machines\[ALPHANUMERIC STRING].exp (export file)

The first hard disk listed for each platform, forwarder-va.vmdk and forwarder-va.vhd, contains the DNS forwarder software that takes in client DNS queries and forwards them to Umbrella Anycast resolvers. This disk also contains the sync process that periodically checks in with the Umbrella API.

The second hard disk listed for each platform, dynamic.vmdk and dynamic.vhd, contain organization-specific information that is required by the virtual appliance's sync process. If the virtual appliance's sync process located on the forwarder-va hard disk does not have the information on the dynamic disk available, then it is unable to sync with the Umbrella API, and the process remains disabled. Additionally, the virtual appliance never registers with the Umbrella Dashboard, and it can continue to fail the Updates test shown in the earlier screenshots.