VMware Management Server Broke - Need to install a new one

[penfold]

Quick background, our VMWare management server stopped working properly last week and through various methods we have not been able to get it working again. We were on the phone with Support who have gone through everything we could try and in the end it was down to a re-install to try and get it working again. This hasn't worked and our other idea is to re-create a new instance of the server as a VM (currently it was Physical)

 

So at the minute I'm building a fresh machine to install the management server software on, but can anyone give me any gotcha's before I get going as I've never done this before. When VMWare was installed last time it was done by external company but we need to get this done quickly.

 

Cheers

[pantscat]

Do you mean vCenter?

 

If so - it's pretty straightforward.

 

You've got two options:

 

1. Create a new VM, install SQL and restore the last good backup of the vCentre DB - then install vCentre and point it at the database. Actually, depending on what version of VMware you're running it's not quite that simple - 5.0 onwards also will need some fiddling to get SSO working again.

 

2. Create a new VM, install vCentre and setup from scratch - should be pretty straightforward as all you'll really need to do is import the hosts, and do a little bit of minor config.

 

Personally, if you've only got a few hosts I'd go with option 2.

 

Ant

[penfold]

Thanks, originally our thoughts were to try Option 1 but as my boss is currently trying to re-install stuff on the existing box (which is not working) I'm trying to go for Option 2 in the hope that we can get something up and running today. Downside is as it's got to be quick I don't want to bodge the config or install more features than are needed.

 

Cheers

 

Edit: Yes it is VCenter we are trying to get installed and we are running 5.1

Edited September 15, 2014 by penfold

[pantscat]

Option 2 will be really quick - what version of vCenter are you running?

[glennda]

If you are licensed for VCenter I would go for the Virtual Center Virtual Appliance - it will install a Linux Virtual Machine.

 

I find this better now than installing on Windows - all self contained and one less server to manage. (No Linux experience required).

[pantscat]

That's sound advice actually - the vApp is really straightforward.

[glennda]

That's sound advice actually - the vApp is really straightforward.

 

It is very good, the limitations have now been removed to make it very similar to the Windows Version. The only thing is you need to install the VMware Update Manager on a second Windows machine as this is not installed under Linux.

[penfold]

If you are licensed for VCenter I would go for the Virtual Center Virtual Appliance - it will install a Linux Virtual Machine.

 

I find this better now than installing on Windows - all self contained and one less server to manage. (No Linux experience required).

I've just quickly read this now and it looks really straight forward....is this a case of install with the basic options (get it on our network) and then allow me to login to the web client and configure it from there?

[glennda]

I've just quickly read this now and it looks really straight forward....is this a case of install with the basic options (get it on our network) and then allow me to login to the web client and configure it from there?

 

Yes - it has two management interfaces https://ipaddress:5480 (i think that ports right) which you configure all the settings from, update and upgrade from.

 

Then you login either via the VMware Console or the WebUI (5.5 has some features only available via webui).

 

If you you running 5.1 I would install 5.5 anyway as you can then later upgrade your ESXI hosts.

[penfold]

OK, I've just downloaded these but I'm going to go for my lunch so I can look at this with fresh eyes. I've downloaded 5.5 too as it looked like the only one I could download so hopefully I will be able to get something up and running by he time I finish today.

 

One question though, currently if I log onto each host it tells me they are managed by our non functioning VCenter server. When I create this new VCenter, will I be able to just add the hosts and they will then start looking at the new management server?

[pantscat]

Yes - if you add them it normally prompts that they were previously managed by a different vCenter server, but will let you add them and carry on.

[glennda]

Yes - if you add them it normally prompts that they were previously managed by a different vCenter server, but will let you add them and carry on.

 

As mentioned here yes that is correct.

 

What I would then do (if your version supports DRS) is setup a DRS to tie the VCA to a physical host. This means that when everything is powered off for a reason you know which host the VCA is running on. Otherwise the larger the cluster the harder to find!

[penfold]

I've got this setup and run through the install but now when I try and connect to the webclient I get "vSphere Web Client is missing VMware Lookup Service configuration." but I can't see where to go to install this. I know it must be something obvious, but I can't see the wood for the trees as it were.

 

Edit: Under the services tab it does say the vSphere Web Client is running so I assume it must be a config issue.

 

Edit2: I've just realised that in the summary tab the Server is shown as stopped but the button to start it is greyed out. I've obviously missed something here

Edited September 15, 2014 by penfold

[glennda]

I've got this setup and run through the install but now when I try and connect to the webclient I get "vSphere Web Client is missing VMware Lookup Service configuration." but I can't see where to go to install this. I know it must be something obvious, but I can't see the wood for the trees as it were.

 

Edit: Under the services tab it does say the vSphere Web Client is running so I assume it must be a config issue.

 

Edit2: I've just realised that in the summary tab the Server is shown as stopped but the button to start it is greyed out. I've obviously missed something here

 

Are you connecting from a mac?

[penfold]

Are you connecting from a mac?

No, I did see a post about that somewhere. But I think I read somewhere that if you changed the IP then you need to re-register the certificates? I've changed the IP as it didn't give me the option of specifying one in the initial setup until I logged onto the webpage and then changed it. I'm going to retrace my steps in the morning.

[Ric_]

If you haven't got a second VMWare cluster, don't go for the virtualised thing... it will bite you in the ass next time this happens - how do you fix your dvSwitches when the thing running them can't be reached?

 

If you only have a handful of VMs and very simple networking build from scratch, otherwise you should battle through the re-install option - it isn't as daunting as it sounds.

[penfold]

OK, I've kind of got this installed but I get stuck at waiting for vpxd to initialize which I've read can happen if you change the timezone. Thing is this just seems to happen after I've set AD authentication and enabled the database to embedded.

[penfold]

I've finally managed to get this working by ignoring the webpage I was following for doing it manually and I followed the wizard. Everything has come up ok and I can log in but the time on the server is an hour out from our network (Time Sync is set for AD sync and I can't change this) I can log into the vsphere client but if I try and add user permissions I can't see our network listed. Instead there is an option for local or VSphere.local. I'm guessing this is due to following the wizard but if I login to the VMWare vCenter Server Appliance I can see it listed as SSO Authentication enabled for our network. All the summary screen shows everything is running as expected. Any ideas, or should I just scratch this install and do it manually without the wizard?

[penfold]

Just to let people know what we ended up doing. We have a ready to go Virtual Center Virtual Appliance machine setup but before we brought that into production we basically removed VMware from the Server and re-installed from scratch pointing it back to the existing Database and we are back up and running. We just have an odd issue with the Web client certificate but as everything else is up and running we can sort that out later. We now just need to sort our backups (some of the veeam jobs were edited to go directly to the host) and we are good.

 

Thanks for all the help, as always very useful having people on here to point you in the right direction when things go wrong and need to be fixed quickly.