4.1 Linked Mode Authentication Issue

[buckmp]

Morning all,

So have an issue I need to resolve, we have 4 VC servers all running 4.1 (build 258902) configured in linked mode.  UK, US1, US2 and AUS.  trouble is if we connect to either UK, US1 or US2 we get an error "Failure to authenticate with the server" for the AUS server.  However if we connect to the AUS server, then it shows all the servers in linked mode fine.

The servers are on the same domain, all have the same permissions, and all DNS and WINS is OK.  Has anyone seen this before?  The only thing I can think of is that we get ping times of anything between 260ms to 360ms connecting to AUS from the other sites.  Is there a time out period or something.

Any help woudl be great.

Thanks

Mike

[AureusStone]

From your post I presume everything was working fine for a while.  How long did you have all of the vCenter servers in linked mode before you starting having issues with AUS?

Was there any changes to your environment before this happend?

Your best bet it to have a look in the vCenter logs.  Log on to one of the vCenter servers that you are having authenication issues with the AUS site and then look at the vpx logs straight away.

Also are you certain all vCenter servers are updated to 4.1?  If one is at 4.0 that would explain your issues.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102634...

Is there any logon failures in Windows security logs?

As a last resort it may be worth removing and readding the link.  Make sure you use the same service account as you have on all of the other nodes and make sure that account has local admin rights.

[mark_chuman]

Sounds very similar to something I found during linked deploy with 4.0, but thought they fixed it.  You can try it.  Add this to all your linked VCs.

1.  secpol.msc

2.  Local polices, user rights assignments.

3.  Add authenticated users to "logon as batch job".

[buckmp]

Thanks for the replies,

Mark, unfortunately that didn't work, I think is has something to do with authentication as if you logon locally to that server it works fine, and connects to all the other servers that are linked.

Bit of history, the servers were originally all stand alone and were made linked together via the linked wizard.

Thanks again for the help

Mike

[RayFelix]

Just ran into this issue when linking 3 vCenter servers and your fix worked. Many thanks!