No vCenter shows up on vSphere Web Client

[FabioPecoraro]

Hello,

I managed to install vCenter 5.5 on Windows 7 but when I login in the vSphere Web Client using the administrator@vsphere.local account I can't see any vCenter even though I can access the datastore using the traditional vSphere Client.

How can I verify why no vCenter shows up in the vSphere Web Client?

[lifepo4]

   I encountered same issues recently, in my case, the IP of my web client PC (192.168.5.*) is not in the same subnet of my ESX hosts (192.168.1.*), also I could not ping 192.168.5.* from 192.168.1.*, but I could ping 192.168.1.* from 192.168.5.*. My ESX hosts all nested on a powerful Windows 7 desktop (5.*), so I setup PPTP VPN on this Windows 7 desktop, then VPN to it from my client PC, it solved all the problems. One critical thing of using vCenter is make sure you can ping each host, and if you use Active directory, each host need to be resolved from client PC!

   Since you use administrator@vsphere.local, so role(permission) should not be the reason!

[FabioPecoraro]

Hi lifepo4, thanks for replying.

In my case the ESXi 5.5.0 host is installed on a bare-metal server in the same subnet of the computer on which vSphere Web Client is installed and I don't use Active Directory, so it is really a simple lab testing scenario.

Still no vCenter appears.

[lifepo4]

    Try to install vCenter onto Windows 2008 Server because vCenter requires several components to function (or windows 2012 Server, you can use each for free for 180 days, try to install Windows Server onto another 64-bit PC/Server with at least 4GB RAM). Or you can deploy vCenter server on top of your ESXi as a virtual machine (download the vCenter appliance from vmware, then use vSphere client to import the ova appliance), after installing, you will visit the https://*.*.*.*:5480  (*.*.*.* the IP of the vCenter Virtual MAchine) and configure the vCenter, but my experience with appliance is no good. Then use vCenter web client from your windows 7 machine, you should be fine.

   
   If you have a powerful PC, try this  http://www.labguides.com, it will allow you build a sophisticated "enterprise" like datacenter.  Buona fortuna!

[SureshKumarMuth]

Are you able to login to vcenter using vsphere client using the same account?

Regards,

Suresh

[FabioPecoraro]

@lifepo4

Yeah I will definitely try with Windows Server 2008. Thanks for your hints!

@Sureshkumar M

I use the root user to log in with the vSphere Client.

[SureshKumarMuth]

Can you please check what role has been given to administrator@vsphere.local using vsphere client session using root credentials. If you are able to login to vsphere client using administrator@vsphere.local then you should be able to see the vcenter in webclient, mostly it is due to permission issue.

Regards,

Suresh

[FabioPecoraro]

I don't have any administrator@vsphere.local user on the vSphere Client, I just login using the root user created during the ESXi installation and there are the defaults users and groups.

I think too that it must be a permission issue probably because I missed some steps as I'm pretty a newcomer to vSphere 5.5 and the Web Client.

The thing here is that I don't use any Domain and I didn't create any user or add permissions; I thought login with the administrator@vsphere.local was enough to make the vCenter appear.

[FabioPecoraro]

Just to update you, the reason why no vCenter showed up is simply because no VMware vCenter service was installed on Windows 7 even though the vCenter installation had completed. That pretty surprised me.

Anyway tried Windows Server 2008 and everything works.