HPE Storage Users Group

I recently built a new SSMC 3.8.0 VM appliance in preparation for applying patch 3.8.0.1 to fix log4j vulnerability. After configuring the appliance using config_appliance (see attached) i was able to login to appliance okay (via the web console) under the ssmcadmin a/c. However when i tried following the next step, connect to the TUI https:\\xx.xx.xx.xx:8443 (under Administrator Console) to connect to existing 3par Storage, I get the invalid username or password error attached. (I get the same error whether attempting to login under Chrome, Edge or IE browser.)

I understand that from SSMC version 3.6 and above, the ssmcadmin account is used for connecting to the SSMC appliance and TUI (as Administrator console), whereas prior to version 3.6 you would have had to define a separate Administrator account for connecting under Administrator console. I have checked with the 3rd party provider hosting the VM and they have confirmed that they can see no traffic being blocked on their firewall "there isn’t anything blocked or reset on the FW side".

I am seeing some certificate related errors related to the connection under all x3 browsers but then i see similar errors connecting to existing (SSMC 3.3.1) remote console and it doesn't prevent me from logging on to that console + our Intel team have said that they think it unlikely that these SSL errors would be preventing me from logging on. However, in the absence of any other errors I'm wondering if the invalid SSL's are the issue and if so how i might resolve them. I would be grateful for any feedback on this as have tried HP message boards already but no-one appears to have encountered this particular issue before and/or know how to resolve it.

Not sure what you're trying to do here...... but....

when you log on to the administrator console of SSMC, you are not logging on to any 3PARs.

You are only logging on to the SSMC appliance. No external network connectivity is required. If you're getting "incorrect password", I would redeploy the appliance and setting a password with only letters and numbers to ensure you're not getting into any special character issues across different keyboard layouts.

Thanks for the feedback. What we're trying to achieve here is to login to Administrator console to connect /add storage to the appliance (as we did for our previous/existing SSMC 3.3.1 configuration). This is also documented as next step of the 3.8.0 build process (page 53 >> below)

https://support.hpe.com/hpesc/public/do ... cale=en_US


Also before logging this ticket i did try changing the ssmcadmin password but it didnt make any difference. Also when setting the ssmcadmin password it does require inclusion of special characters below...

"The password must contain at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one digit, one specialcharacter, and the length of the password must be minimum of eight characters. The special characters arethe nonalphanumeric characters. For example, ~, `,! , @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (,), _, +, -, =, [, {,], }, \, |,; , :, ', ", <, >, /,and,?. "


I just came across the following section below (on page 46) regarding disabling 2 Factor authentication which seemed to offer a reason/solution to the Administrator login issue we've been experiencing. However after disabling service and restarting the appliance discovered that the issue remains so at a loss as to how to resolve this ?


"Strict 2-factor authentication is enabled by default. However, this is enforced only when 2-factor authentication is configured and active. This blocks access to web administrator console for ssmcadmin as this is a local account authenticated using password credentials. In order to allow access to administrator console, disable this strict 2-factor authentication setting.

In that case I would redeploy to get a fresh start and if that doesn’t help, log a case with HPE. I’ve deployed a couple of 3.8 appliances and never seen that issue.

Thankyou for the advice MammaGutt.

I am now faced with an additional issue , which i suspect, could well be related to the original problem i continue to experience in trying to login to the GUI under Administrator Console. SInce building the appliance and changing the default SSMCADMIN password I've remained logged into the appliance via the VMware web console. However after logging out of the web console last week I'm now unable to log back in (even though the password remains unchanged).

When i try entering the username characters appear upper/lowercase/upper/lowercase etc (as per screenshot). I am eventually able to the enter ssmcadmin in lowercase but note that when entering the password some of the characters entered in lowercase appear uppercase (and vice versa). Although the username and password i enter via the Browser GUI does display the correct case in the browser connection window, I'm wondering whether the case entered is being translated correctly on the appliance which would explain why im now unable to login via web console or Gui (i was never able to login via putty due to access denied error) so now faced with having to rebuild appliance in order to faciliate any form of access via ssmcadmin username !

That could be a VMware HTML console + Browser issue. If you are using Firefox, try Chrome.

Hi Richard,


Yes it was definitely a VMware HTML console + Browser issue

After rebuilding the appliance for the 3rd time last week i asked a colleague to change the ssmcadmin default password and then try logging out and back into the appliance (which they were able to do). However when i attempted to login from my laptop to the same VMware web console i got the invalid password error again as caps lock still not functioning correctly for me. I also tried connecting to VMware from a 2nd laptop (via citrix) with the same result !. However when i tried logging in via putty i was now able to login okay (as bypassing the browser/console keyboard issue) and was also able to login under the gui https://10.xxx.xxx.xx:8443 , connect to the 3PAR's and accept certificates and can now access all the new features without any issue.