vCenter 4.1 Annoyances

[dougdavis22]

Don't know about anyone else, but I keep finding annoyances with vCenter 4.1. I have a couple at the moment, I wonder if anyone else has had the same & knows what to do about them:

1) Search - when I try and search for a partial name of a VM, I get no search results despite me knowing there are a number of VMs that would match the query. If I do the same query with 'Inventory' selected, I still get no VMs in the results but I do get a list of datastores that match the query! Anyone got any ideas on why the VMs aren't being picked up in the search?

2) On another vCenter instance, when I try to run a search, I eventually get an error 'Login to the query service failed'. Anyone else seen that & know how to resolve?

3) Inventory - sometimes, when I try and sort a list of VMs in the inventory by name, it doesn't work - it just seems to be a random list. If I close the vSphere Client and log back in, it works. Why?

4) Update Manager Tasks - Quite frequently, the Check New Notifications or Download Patch Definitions tasks just sit with a status of 'queued'. I have to restart Update Manager services to clear this out & get them working again. Any ideas?

This 4.1 install is only a few weeks old, and hasn't been heavily used so far. There's been an upgrade path, starting with 4.0 U1 moving to U2 then 4.1. No problems were encountered along the way though.

If no-one has any ideas, I'll be raising some calls with Support!!

Any help appreciated.

Cheers,

Doug.

[AlbertWT]

which upgrade path that you took ?

I also want to go direct update path from v4.0u1 into 4.1 skipping the 4.0U2

Kind Regards,

AWT

[maishsk]

Do you still have a vSphere 4.0 Client installed on the machine you are using to connect?
Maish

VMware Communities User Moderator

Virtualization Architect & Systems Administrator

- @maishsk

[PduPreez]

Doug

I understand you are connecting to the vCenter from a remote machine

Have you tried opening vCenter on the host itself and do a search test?

I have seen this problem last week and it kinda fixed itself, cause I'm not sure what I did

[dougdavis22]

Thanks for all the responses so far:

AlbertWT - The upgrade path started from a base install of 4.0 Update 1, followed by in-place upgrade to 4.0 Update 2 & then again to 4.1.

Maish - I do still have a 4.0 client installed, as well as a 2.5 Update 1 client for accessing some of our older systems. Annoying I need to retain all 3 versions at the moment.

PduPreez - I have just tried the same search on the console of the vCenter server(s) and it makes no difference - the results are still the same.

I have today raised an SR with VMware in the hope they may also be able to shed some light on these oddities.

Cheers,

Doug.

[maishsk]

You could be suffering the same issues as I have here Issue with vCenter Versions

But then again Maybe not.....
Maish

VMware Communities User Moderator

Virtualization Architect & Systems Administrator

- @maishsk

[PduPreez]

This is a shot in the dark, but did you try to restart the Vcenter WebServices?

[sabya1232003]

I suspect this issue may be due to the VI Client.Since you have different versions of Clients and for each version the respective .NET pkg is on your system.This kind of response on VIC is mostly due to .NET services.Try restarting the same on your PC.

[allencrawford]

I have pretty much all these issues as well. Except I used to be able to search on a 4.1 vCenter just fine, most of our problems occurred when connecting to a 4.0 vCenter Server when you have both the vSphere 4.0 and 4.1 client installed (and who doesn't?). We opened an SR with VMware and got a workaround that sort of helps (see http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1024493), but you can't use VUM then. In the end, VMware acknowledged the bug(s) and we're stuck waiting until they release an update for the 4.1 client I guess.

Problem now is that we have a brand new, freshly installed, vCenter 4.1 server and I'm seeing search issues on both vCenter 4.0 (just tries and tries with no result ever) and 4.1 (login to the query service failed). In addition, if I go to the "sessions" view I'm seeing all the sessions, but not all of the account's "Full Names" are showing up. This is a brand new phenomenon. We're migrating to a brand new, freshly installed vCenter 4.1 server in our other environment on Thursday, so I think I'll remove all my vSphere Clients at that point in time and just install 4.1 and see how that goes.

But, very frustrating as it appears VMware didn't do any QA of the vSphere Client with previous versions installed. Though I'm not sure the VUM issue (#4 below) is going to be fixed with a client change since I've seen tons of the notification tasks queued up when I connect sometimes. Then when the next task runs (hourly by default) that one works fine and the rest error out finally. We shall see...

[allencrawford]

Oh, and to add two more items to your "annoyances" list:

• Try modifying EVC settings on a cluster in a vCenter 4.0 server. For us, it works fine on the vCenter 4.1 server in the lab, but in prod we get this message when clicking on the EVC settings:

Method not found: 'Vmomi.HostSystemArray EVCState.get_BadSoftwareHostsBlockingEVC()'.

• In addition, the vCenter Storage Monitoring plugin fails to load with this error (clearly pointing to a 4.1 version even though this server is 4.0 U1):

The plug-in failed to load on server(s) vcenter due to the following error: Could not load file or assembly 'VpxClientCommon, Version=4.1.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=7c8-0a434483c7c50' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.

Ugliest vCenter release I can remember...

[AlbertWT]

Thanks for giving us the update here Allen,

so in this case suppose we just in phase I migration using vsphere client 4.0U1 with vcenter 4.1 we could stuck into that problem ?

[allencrawford]

I'm not sure I follow the question, AlbertWT. You can't use the 4.0U1 client with vCenter 4.1--it'll force you to upgrade the new client. But we've found all sorts of bugs if you have both the 4.0U1 and 4.1 client installed and you try connecting to a 4.0 vCenter server (not so bad when connecting to a 4.1 vCenter server).

And, to add yet another annoyance to this thread, we've found that in 4.1 (even with JUST the 4.1 client installed) if you view your "sessions" page some times the Active Directory name of a user (or multiple users) will not show up, while others do. Not a huge deal, but something that is broken.

[AlbertWT]

Allen,

Thanks for the explanation, I appreciate that, at the moment I'm thinking to upgrade my VCenter 4.0 to 4.1 first and then my laptop vSphere Client, after that the last thing to do is the ESXi hosts (clean reinstall of 4.1 and then restore the profile from vMA 4.1 appliance to the newly installed ESXi 4.1).

Cheers,

Albert

[sachink0312]

i am also facing the same issue...we just upgraded our environment to 4.1 U2. We have some 4.0 U1 hosts and some ESXi 4.1 U2 and ESX 4.1 U2. I am also facing same issue while sorting and searching VM name. has anyone got any answer to this issue?

[sachink0312]

below is the resolution provided by vmwre, i will try this now

To install vSphere Client 4.0 and 4.1 in separate directories:

1. Install vSphere Client 4.0 in C:\Client4.0.
2. Copy C:\Client4.0 to an external drive (such as a share or USB).
3. Uninstall vSphere Client 4.0. Do not skip this step.
4. Install vSphere Client 4.1 in C:\Client4.1.
5. Copy the 4.0 Client folder from the external drive to the machine.
6. Run the vpxClient.exe from the vSphere Client folder.

[allencrawford]

Did this resolve your issue?  Because I may have another suggestion for you if it doesn't turn out to be a client issue.

[sachink0312]

no ..but i got latest uodate from vmware regarding new KB... plz check

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1000153&sl... 0 287744198

[allencrawford]

So did the VMware update resolve your issue then?

[sachink0312]

yes it has resolved.....

[Anton_Lebedev_N]

I have a fresh install of  vCenter Server 4.1 Update 2 | 27 Oct 2011 | Build 491557 with the same client and I am getting the Unable to Login to Query service.

My health status shows all green.

I dont think that KB: 1000153 will apply to my scenario, (For vCenter Server 4.1, copy the xhiveShared.jar file to this location in the vCenter Server:)

What is the work around, its super annoying to have to scroll each time through 100s of machines ? thanks in advance