Balance only discovers some of the VMWare hosts

[stenberg]

Hi,

I have a situation where we have installed Balance
4.1.0.2 and when discovering the Vcenter 5.1 half of the ESX server and a major
part of the VMs does not show up in Balance. The ESX servers are all in the
same subnet. The ESX servers all belong to the same cluster, but they are discovered as stand alone servers.

We managed to add the ESX servers manually, but the VMs will still
not show. They are not using a Proxy server and only wants to use the VA and
the Vcenter information about the VMs.

We get Vcenter proxy errors, which is a little bit confusing, since the Vcenter itself should not require a proxy server.

We have checked the UUIDs and they are all unique.

They have VMWare tools installed on all their VMs. I cannot
find any information minimal version for VMWare tools, it only says it needs to
be up to date.

I have seen another case,2004032094,  where it is described that Balance needs to be able to reach port 135 of the VMguests, even if the Proxy is not being used, but we have guests on the same network, where can reach port 135 and it is still not added to Balance.

Have any of you seen this behaviour before?

Regards

Mikael Stenberg

[plauterb]

We managed to add the ESX servers manually, but the VMs will still not show.

You should not have to add the ESX hosts manually, that is a sign that the vCenter discovery has somehow messed up (which you already knew)

They are not using a Proxy server and only wants to use the VA and the Vcenter information about the VMs.

This should be fine.

We get Vcenter proxy errors, which is a little bit confusing, since the Vcenter itself should not require a proxy server.

Where did you add the vCenter from? It should have been under "Discovery, vCenter". You did not add the vCenter as a physical Windows server, maybe?

[stenberg]

Hi Peter,

The vCenter was added under Discovery,vCenter and when we get the summary of the vCenter everything is included. The Cluster, all ESXservers and all VMs.

But after the vCenter collection, the cluster is not recognised, half of the ESXservers and a majority of the VMs are not discovered or added to the database.

We get collection errors like this one:

Virtual Center Discovery Collection Interrupted for 10.240.0.100 Uncategorized exception occured during JMS processing; nested exception is javax.jms.JMSException

[dbourque]

Hi Mikael,

Please see the following clarifications and suggestions.

1) The version of vmware  tools does not typically matter. Balance requirements are that the tools be installed for VM's to be detected and its "recommended" that they are up to date. 

• Can you attach a Screen capture of this Vcenter "PROXY" error you are mentioning? It maybe a legacy error code that is still in the product from the time in the past when vcenter was added as a "proxy" and the current virtual centers tab did not exist.

2) Make sure that the Vcenter credential used are specified at the Datacenter Level and not at a cluster level.  If the credential is not at the TOP of the vshphere tree, It will only have visibility into the cluster/hosts it is assigned to.

3)Try a different Vcenter credential for testing purposes. (Try an Admin Account ).

4) Browse the ESX MOB. see these KB articles on the steps.

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=2015552&actp=LIST_RECENT&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1316617241110https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=2016771&actp=LIST_RECENT&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1316617241110

https://kb.netapp.com/support/index?page=content&id=2015552&actp=LIST_RECENT&viewlocale=en_US&searchid=1316617241110

5) The long running vcenter discovery collection is a problem that should be addressed.  it should be completing with a discovery comm status of : UP =OK .

• How large is the infrastructure? 
• How many Hosts/VM's?
• Watch for Scale/sizing issues. Make sure you review the resource recommendations specified in the Installation & config guide as well as the User guides for CPU/Memory and Reservations.

6) The collection error you provided "Uncategorized exception occured during JMS processing; nested exception is javax.jms.JMSException" is an exception thrown in response to a Shutdown of Balance. That message other than the fact that is pollutes the server log is expected and functioning as designed if the Balance was shutdown or rebooted.

Good luck.

Best regards,

Don Bourque

OnCommand Insight SE

Strategy & Architecture

NetApp

Waltham, Massachusetts USA 

http://www.linkedin.com/in/donaldbourque

[stenberg]

1.

2-3. The credential are in order. They are the administrator account and has access to all objects

4. We have tested this and it works.

5. This is our main problem. We had a support engineer(case#2004336613) Webexed into the system this afternoon and the vCenter discovery never seems to complete. When our support was running through the diag tools, they found that we cannot do a connect test towards the vCenter dns name or any other server. We can lookup the dns name but we cannot connect to it. If we use the ip adress the connection test works. We have gathered logs for the support to analyze.

6. Understood.

Thanks