vSphere

Problem Statement

After upgrading to vSphere 5.1 you experience the following error ‘the public key in specification does not match the vCenter public key.  You have to reenter the password in order to proceed’ when trying to deploy new virtual machines from templates.

Issue

The administrators password used to create the virtual machine was encrypted using a different Certificate Authority to the one installed on vCenter.  This means that the password is no longer trusted.

Resolution

In vCenter go to Home > Customization Specification Manager

Edit Specification > 5 Administrator Password > Re Enter Credentials > Save

If your Customization Specification is domain joined you will need to enter your credentials again under 9 Workgroup or Domain

You will now be able to deploy your VM from the template in question.

Problem Statement

After upgrading to vCenter 5.1 and ESXi 5.1 U1, Active Directory authentication to an ESXi Host no longer works.  Using the vSphere Client error message ‘cannot complete login due to incorrect user name or password’ is received.

Quick Checks

1. Single Sign On checked, LDAP Active Directory authentication source working for vCenter and another ESXi Host.

2. Permissions checked, ‘Administrators’ Active Directory Security Group applied to vCenter and permissions propagated to child objects.

3. Authentication Services Services, Active Directory being used and Computer Object is valid.

Troubleshooting Steps

I tried to remove the host from Active Directory and re-authenticate.  Hosts and Clusters > Host > Settings > Manage > Authentication Services

An error message appeared stating that ‘the user or group named VMFOCUSdomain^admins does not exist’.

The Permissions tab on the affected ESXi Host didn’t show a VMFOCUSdomain^admins group

I added the VMFOCUSDomain Admins group to the top level and inherited permissions.  Another quick try and I wasn’t able to login to the ESXi Host using the vSphere Client.

This time the Leave Domain setting worked.  Plus I also deleted the Computer Object for my ESXi Host from Active Directory.

Next, I rejoined the Domain and tried to login  directly to the ESXi Host directly using Active Directory credentials, which again failed.

Resolution

I added the Domain Admins group directly to the ESXi Host

When using the vSphere Client I deselected ‘Use Windows session credentials’ and manually entered Administrator and was able to login successfully!

Simple when you know what is causing the issue.

I was making some changes to the vmfocus.com lab the other day and kept getting a repeated error Call “HostStorageSystem.UnmountVmfsVolume” for object “storageSystem-15” on vCenter Server when I was trying to unmount a VMFS Datastore

When I went to unmount the VMFS Datastore it met all the relevant criteria.

Resolution

If you are booting from flash device such as a USB or internal SD card, then a VMFS Datastore would have been selected to store your output logs for troubleshooting.

These need to be moved to a VMFS Datastore which you are going to keep.

Note: You will need to make these changes to each ESXi Host

Select ESXi Host > Configuration > Advanced Settings > Syslog > Syslog.global.logDir

Change the paramters to a VMFS Datastore that will remain e.g.

[ESXi01_RAID10_L01_SAS] /scratch/log

Hit OK and then you will have success in unmounting your VMFS Datastore.