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rwrussell
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Cannot add previous hosts to vCenter Appliance

Greetings.  We are in the process of migrating our hosts to new hardware.  We had three working hosts running ESXi 5.5.0-1331820 with the vCenter Appliance on one of them.  Everything was working fine.  In the process of moving virtual machines around, the vCenter Appliance was deleted (intentionally).  We recreated the vCenter Appliance from the 5.5.0.5201 OVA and ran through the setup wizard same as before. 

Now when adding one of the existing hosts to the vCenter, it finds the host and displays all the information.  When finish is clicked, it quickly runs up to 80% and the host shows up, then disconnects.  The log shows:  add standalone host, added host, cannot connect host in datacenter; error connecting host, removed host in datacenter.

The error that shows is:  Cannot contact the specified host (x.x.x.x). The host may not be available on the network, a network configuration problem may exist, or the management services on this host may not be responding.


Now the stupid thing is that we cannot even add the host that the vCenter appliance is on.  Also, all hosts and the vCenter appliance are on the same management network.  There is no firewall blocking any ports.  I read through a bunch of the Knowledge Base postings and most are regarding incorrect IP addresses or blocked ports or the like.  I checked through everything and couldn't find anything wrong.


Last thing is that we blew away the ESXi host that had the vCenter Appliance on it and re-installed ESXi 5.5.0-1623387 (slightly newer version than before) and then reinstalled the vCenter appliance on it exactly the same as before.  Now we can add that host but still cannot add the other hosts.  So it appears the issue is something with the hosts and not the vCenter appliance. 


Anyone have any ideas?

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fshinnick
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I am running in to the same kind of issues with some additional factors.

FWIW, have you tried the following in this order? 1. stop the vpxa service on the host, 2. stop the vmware-vpxd service on the vcenter server, 3. start the vmware-vpxd service on the vcenter server, 4. Start the vpxa serivce on the host. Then try to re-add.

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a_p_
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Do you see "Disassociate host from vCenter Server" in the "Host Management" pane on the host's Summary tab when you connect to the hosts directly using the vSpere Client?

André

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rwrussell
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No, in vSphere, there is a hotlink to "Manage this host through VMware vCenter".

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rwrussell
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Is it possible that the ESXi host is holding onto the certificate of the original vCenter server and thus denying the connectivity?  I can add any new host to the vCenter server which was never connected to vCenter but I cannot add a host that was connected to the same vCenter server after the vCenter server was deleted and then reinstalled.  If so, how can we remove the certificate on the ESXi host for the old vCenter server? 

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fshinnick
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I am running in to the same kind of issues with some additional factors.

FWIW, have you tried the following in this order? 1. stop the vpxa service on the host, 2. stop the vmware-vpxd service on the vcenter server, 3. start the vmware-vpxd service on the vcenter server, 4. Start the vpxa serivce on the host. Then try to re-add.

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rwrussell
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I have shut down and restarted all servers.  It doesn't change anything.

Also, on the one host that had nothing on it but the vCenter appliance which the vCenter appliance couldn't attach to, I reinstalled the vCenter appliance but this didn't help.  I then reinstalled VMware from scratch and then installed the vCenter appliance and now vCenter can attach to that host.  It still fails attempting to attach to the other hosts.  I also changed IP addresses of all hosts but this didn't help either.

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rwrussell
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Interesting.  Even though I had previously totally shut down the host and restarted, this didn't fix the issue.  However, SSHing into the host and restarting the vpxa service did fix it.  Thanks much for your help.

fshinnick
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Terrific!

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