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ppohl
Contributor
Contributor

Retrieving chart data... vSphere Client freezes

Hello, when I go to Performance -> Advanced of a VM the vSphere Client freezes saying "retrieving chart data...". Performance -> Overwiev is displayed correctly. Any idea why?

It works fine for other VMs.

I use vCenter Server 4u1 with MS SQL 2008 Standard and ESXi 4u1.

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14 Replies
BenRussoUSA
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I have a similar problem. vsphere vcenter 4; vsphere 4 client

Try to open an ESX 4 host performance tab, and the vsphere client hangs. EVERY TIME.

I can do the same thing from other desktop PC's and it works fine.

It is just hanging on my desktop.

Even if I close the client and re-open it, everything works fine until I go to the performance tab for that one ESX host. FREEZE.

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VMXTROOPER
Contributor
Contributor

I am also getting the same error. It just started today on 1 of 3 Host. I uninstalled & reinsatlled the Vsphere client on my desktop. I have stop & restarted the Vmware & Vpxa service & the error still exists.

I logged in from 2 diffrent Computers with the Vsphere Client & it works fine.

It could be related to the VM or Baremetal box that you login from with associated VSphere Client

Hope this helps

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BenRussoUSA
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I fixed the problem.

Delete everything under C:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Roaming\VMware\*

and C:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Local\VMware\*

Problem is gone.

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VMXTROOPER
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the update . However, I don't have these directories on my system as listed below:

C:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Roaming\VMware\*


and C:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Local\VMware\*

Therefore I can't delete them & my original issue still exists

VMXTROOPER

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VMXTROOPER
Contributor
Contributor

By the way your solutionis for a Vista or Windows 2008 box. I have a XP Box. Did you delete the *.xml files. These are the files that provide your charts info, etc...

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BenRussoUSA
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

You are correct, on Vista 64 bit.

On XP I guess the directory would be:

C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\VMware\

I deleted everything under those directories.

Then when I restarted vsphere client it recreated the contents.

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VMXTROOPER
Contributor
Contributor

Ok Here's what I have determined to be a viable solution.

Delete all files in Windows XP to include the P2V Folder with the following path:

C:\Documents and Settings\(username)\Application Data\VMware\P2v\*.xml

Windows Vista

C:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Roaming\VMware\*.xml

and C:\Users\<<username>>\AppData\Local\VMware\*.xml

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JCV
Contributor
Contributor

Just wanted to say I had ran into this issue recently. I was gather performance stats on a group of vms and then suddenly the client froze on me. After forcing the vsphere client to close I re-started and could not view stats on those vms and the client would lock up. I could view stats on other vms with my desktop, and could view the suspect vms stats from other pc's.

After a few days of tinkering and searching I found this post and wanted to say it worked for me.

Now I am curious as to what happened or why this fixed the issue...

Regardless thanks Ben

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chanakaEK
Contributor
Contributor

OK deleting everything under these directories is probably an overkill (also a bit of a sledge hammer approach to solving the issue). I think all you need to do is to delete / rename the \AppData\Roaming\VMware. This should rectify the issue.

Smiley Happy

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mruzicka
Contributor
Contributor

Yup, was having the same issues (I suspect as a result of making an accidental custom chart) and just deleting the *-charts.xml files in \AppData\Roaming\VMware took care of it.  That's all I really had in there beside some .DMP files so I might have been better off removing the whole thing. I'm guessing this won't reset any other settings you applied previously and just remove any custom charts that are causing problems.  Uninstalling and reinstalled the client hadn't helped, but everything does appear to be running quicker now.

Also, if you aren't as familiar with Windows you'll need to enable view hidden files to see this dir.

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stemplar
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I had the same issue, so I looked at it in more detail.

In my cases it is about a setting on %AppData%\VMware\<my.vSphere.server>-charts.xml.

It's all about the Node <TimeRange name="Custom...">. You may need to search for this, as you may have more than one occurrence.

The start and the end of the interval were too close together. This probably works, as long as the interval is not too long ago, but as soon as vSphere compresses the performance data, this starts to be an issue.

     <TimeRange name="Custom...">
        <CustomTimeType name="From">
          <Start>Thursday, January 12, 2012 10:00 PM</Start>
          <End>Thursday, January 12, 2012 11:30 PM</End>
        </CustomTimeType>
      </TimeRange>

There are different ways to fix it of course. If you want to keep the dates, it's easier, if yo remove the day of the week (i.e. 'Thursday, ', to find an interval that works. When reading the file, the vSphere client performs a data type check.

The smalest interval that still loaded in my case was  >= 5x the interval defined in statistics (or around 5 - 6 samples)

     <TimeRange name="Custom...">
        <CustomTimeType name="From">
          <Start>January 12, 2012 06:00 AM</Start>
          <End>January 12, 2012 04:00 PM</End>
        </CustomTimeType>
      </TimeRange>

The easiest approach however is to to set it to a non custom value.

     <TimeRange name="Past month" />

or

     <TimeRange name="Real-time" />

Hope this helps others as well.

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Matt_B1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The above post is excellent.  It was easy to find the .xml file and use an example config to edit the problematic VM.  I used XML Marker and edited the VM with the issue to show a standard chart like Past Day rather than Custom Time.  The VMs listed in the XML are by ID so you can use PowerCLI to find the ID if it is not obvious.

          
Get-VM problemVMname | select Id
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ferdis
Hot Shot
Hot Shot

Great! Resolved also my case. Thank you so much!!! Smiley Happy

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mruzicka
Contributor
Contributor

I will be out of the office until Friday September 28th. If you have an urgent issue please contact Matt Boston at mboston@cisp.com or 419.724.5397

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