One of the new features in vSphere 5 is the availability of a web-based client to manage vSphere hosts and virtual machines. This is useful in the event where you - as the vSphere admin - delegates access to virtual machines and rather not require these VM owners to install the full-blown vSphere client. I recently installed the vSphere Web Client in my homelab and ran across the following error after I tried to view the web management page:
The error "Unable to connect to vCenter Inventory Service" https://homelab.com:10443 certainly seemed at first like an odd error as the hostname of my vCenter server is missing in the URL. After doing some research, I found that this is caused when the host name or domain name of the vCenter Server does not match the name that was entered during initial installation of the vCenter Server. Below are the steps to update the configuration for the vCenter Inventory Service:
1) Stop the vCenter Inventory Service
2) From the command prompt: cd "install_drive"\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\Inventory Service\scripts
3) Run the command: register.bat machinename.domainname 443
4) Restart the vCenter Inventory Service
5) Restart the vSphere Web Client
vSphere Web Client Home page
Virtual Machine Management
Host Performance
The vSphere Web Client that comes with vSphere 5 is a powerful tool that has matured quite a bit from it's prior version. It provides more options for host and VM management and for most, can be an adequate substitute for the Windows client.
