Troubleshooting

After testing a recent upgrade to VMware vCenter Server 7.0 Update 3i, I encountered an issue where the vCenter Server would no longer authenticate users via smart cards/X.509 certificates. The vCenter Server would not even request a certificate from the client’s browser anymore. This seemed odd as the functionality worked fine on the previous 7.0 Update 3h. Surely VMware wouldn’t make a breaking change within a minor patch release? After reverting the upgrade and testing that it wasn’t an issue with the upgrade process itself, a support ticket was opened with VMware support.

Recently, while attempting to change some settings on several instances of vRealize Orchestrator embedded within vRealize Automation 8.8.1 appliances, I found that I could not successfully authenticate to the vRealize Orchestrator Control Center interface. The interface is located at https://[vRA URL]/vco-controlcenter and requires that you provide the “root” user credentials to access it. Although I could authenticate to the virtual appliance consoles using the “root” credentials, I could not successfully authenticate to the vRealize Orchestrator Control Center interface.

One of my work colleagues brought to my attention today an issue in VMware vRealize Suite Lifecycle Manager 8.8.0 to my attention today. While attempting to complete some regular account password changes, he realized that the Password Locker was only returning 10 passwords and stating there were only 10 passwords in the system.

While browsing the VMware Flings website, I recently ran across a Fling previously released in November of 2021 titled vSphere Diagnostic Tool that I found to be quite interesting. The tool is a set of python scripts that execute various diagnostic commands against a vCenter Server appliance. The scripts aim to rapidly isolate common known issues with vCenter Server appliances to aid and provide the end-user with information on how to remediate the problems.

While attempting to upgrade my ESXi hosts to the latest vSphere 7.0 release, I ran into the following error on all of the hosts in my home lab: The upgrade has VIBs that are missing dependencies. Remove the VIBs or use Image Builder to create a custom upgrade ISO image that contains the missing dependencies, and try to upgrade again. While the error message gives you a pretty good idea of what might be causing the issue, for the life of me, I couldn’t think of what VIBs it could be referring to.