VMware Cloud Community
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

Cannot update host profile

Good morning (or whatever it is where you are) all,

I recently decided it was time to configure host profiles for my vSphere environment.

I created a profile by extracting from one of my ESXi hosts and went to town configuring it.

I didn't change a whole lot, removing and disabling a lot of features that were either unused or unnecessary.

When I tried to save, I received the following error in vCenter:

Task: Update host profile

Status: A general system error occurred:

Initiator: mydomain\user

Target:

Server: vc.int.mydomain.uk

Error stack: Host profile update failed. Check the log files for details.

I'm running vCenter 7 (build 16749653) and all hosts run ESXi 6.7 (mix of u2 and u3).

I extracted the vpxd.log from vCenter and found the attached log extract, but couldn't really see anything helpful.

There's also this, a screenshot of the "Edit host profile" UI, which has a "failed" tab but shows nothing there.

It may be worth noting that I also seem to recall having this issue quite a while ago when I was running vCenter 6.7 and a mixture of ESXi 6.0 and 6.5 on my hosts, so the issue doesn't seem to be isolated to the vSphere product versions which I'm currently running.

Are there any further logs I could investigate? Has anyone seen this before?

Any and all help is much appreciated. Thanks, guys Smiley Happy

17 Replies
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hey rafspeik​,

For getting the logs of the Host Profile execution you should login into the ESXi you are trying to apply and search for this: /var/log/syslog.log.

After that paste the output here so we can help you!

Reply
0 Kudos
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

Hi Lalegre​. The issue is actually with configuring the host profile, rather than applying it. I'm unable to configure the profile so I can't even get as far as attempting execution!

Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Sorry my bad.

Could you please share the detail of which are the configurations you are applying on that Host Profile. Checked the logs and they do not have some much information.

Reply
0 Kudos
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

No problem.

I'm trying to configure the following options:

Syslog.global.logDir (value specified by user in host customizations).

VMkernel.Boot.hyperthreadingMitigation (true).

VMkernel.Boot.hyperthreadingMitigationIntraVM (false).

Host Profile Log Configuration (info).

DCUI keyboard (UK).

Date and time configuration (uk.pool.ntp.org).

Standard switch.

pastedImage_1.pngpastedImage_0.png

Virtual machine portgroup.

pastedImage_2.png

Host portgroup (Management network).

pastedImage_3.pngpastedImage_4.png

Netstack instance.

pastedImage_5.pngpastedImage_6.png

Service configuration (all selected set to start/stop with host).

pastedImage_7.png

Security (set root password and add Active Directory users to local Admin group).

Host Acceptance Level Configuration (PartnerSupported).

Active Directory configuration.

pastedImage_9.png

Firewall configuration (bunch of default rules configured to true).

I hope this is sufficient.

Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Okay i can see you are applying bunch of different configurations. I would recommend you to try to save the host profile disabling section by section. Maybe there is an issue on one of the features you are trying to configure.

I know this is not like a specific solution but as the host profile does not have so many categories selected maybe that could be the resolution instead of waiting for somebody that faced the same issue.

Reply
0 Kudos
nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Hey, hope you are doing fine?

Can you tell us more about your vCenter infra?
How many vCSA's do you have? are they linked?
Which user are you trying to run this with? have you tried with administrator@vsphere.local?

Have you tried creating a host profile from a host and editing it? does the error reproduce that way?

It may be silly but: have you tried with a different browser?

Reply
0 Kudos
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks Lalegre​, I will try this.

rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

Hi nachogonzalez​, I'm well thank you, I hope you are too.

I have a single vCSA, no other linked instances.

This host profile was indeed created from a host and edited, so we know that doesn't work, unfortunately.

I just tried with the administrator account in the vCenter SSO domain and also using a different browser. Sadly neither made a difference.

Reply
0 Kudos
nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Good, and what happens if you create a new profile from scatch?

Reply
0 Kudos
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

I don't believe that's possible, a new profile must be created (extracted) from an existing host configuration.

Reply
0 Kudos
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

I would recommend you to try to save the host profile disabling section by section. Maybe there is an issue on one of the features you are trying to configure.

Lalegre​ Unfortunately this hasn't worked. I disabled everything but the configuration of the ntpd service and it failed. I tried the same thing, enabling nothing other than the DCUI keyboard configuration, and that also failed. Likewise for a few other lone configurations which I tried.Thanks for the suggestion though!

Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Oh sorry to hear that. Are you using any special character in the values or in the name of the Host Profile?

Could you restart vCenter? Also could yo try to create the Host Profile but from another host?

Reply
0 Kudos
nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Yeah, this has changed on vSphere 7.

Reply
0 Kudos
nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

are you using the same host as reference hosts?
have you tried restarting managment agents?

Reply
0 Kudos
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

Lalegre Unfortunately neither of these work either. I tried the former yesterday and forgot to mention on my original post and tried the latter just now, to no avail.

Reply
0 Kudos
rafspeik
Contributor
Contributor

nachogonzalez​ I've tried using a few different hosts as a reference, and yes I've tried restarting management agents.

Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

In some VMware products even if you do not have the license required for some features, the features appear in the inventory. Could it be that you do not have the required licenses for Host profile? I do not remember it this is the behavior.

Also something that you can try is to change the debug level from INFO to DEBUG and also apply this on the vSphere Web Client server, maybe there are some logs also there: VMware Knowledge Base

Reply
0 Kudos