Ramblings of an IT Professional: Troubleshooting vCenter Issues
As an IT professional, I’ve had my fair share of dealing with virtualization software, particularly VMware’s vCenter. Recently, I encountered a few issues while working with vCenter 7.x, and I’d like to share some of the workarounds I found helpful. These issues ranged from restoring vCenter backups using Veeam and built-in restore options to troubleshooting an error when logging in to vCenter.
Restoring vCenter Using Veeam
If you need to restore a vCenter using Veeam, be aware that the software cannot restore vCenter the same way it restores VMs. During the restore process, Veeam needs to communicate with the now non-existent vCenter. Since the vCenter is not functioning, the restore cannot happen, and the process will waste great amounts of time. To overcome this issue, you can use a work around:
1. Add a single ESXi host to Veeam using the IP address (assuming the friendly name is known by Veeam).
2. Restore the vCenter backup to an alternate location (i.e., the “new” server).
3. One isn’t really restoring the VM to an alternate location; one can totally restore over the top of the existing VM, which is just a necessary step to get past the requirement of communicating with a non-functional vCenter.
Restoring Virtual Center Using Built-in Restore Options
For those who are using vCenter’s built-in backup feature, the restore process works as follows:
1. Start the vCenter installation process and choose “Restore.”
2. Give it the backup repository details, and follow the rest of the prompts.
What happens is a new vCenter VM is deployed, and the backup information is replayed into it. However, the backup files and the install media need to be on the very same version. If your broken vCenter started out life as a v7.0.1x, upgraded several times, and currently on 7.0.3.01000, the restore will not work due to a versioning mismatch.
vCenter Error When Logging In: “No Healthy Upstream Server”
For some unknown reason, my vCenter quit working, and I was presented with the “No healthy upstream server” message when attempting to log in. This error message is very vague and somewhat of a “catch-all.” Therefore, there isn’t one golden fix out there but a dozen different fixes. Many people give up and just redeploy from scratch.
To troubleshoot this issue, you can try the following:
1. Log into the appliance administration page, where you can attempt to start the non-running services with no luck.
2. Restarting the appliance didn’t work either.
3. Attempt to upgrade vCenter, thinking that the upgrade would replace/repair any broken bits, but this made things worse and failed, so I had to roll back.
4. Check the logs to vmware-vpxd are found here: /storage/log/vmware/vpxd-svcs/vpxd-svcs.log
5. Run python scripts from a VMware KB to check SSL certificates, and they passed.
6. The cert. tool contained within vCenter to reset all the certs fixed my issue. This utility can be launched by running the following command: /usr/lib/vmware-vmca/bin/certificate-manager
In conclusion, restoring vCenter using Veeam and built-in restore options, as well as troubleshooting the “No healthy upstream server” error when logging in to vCenter, can be challenging. However, by understanding these workarounds and troubleshooting steps, you’ll be better equipped to handle these issues and get your vCenter up and running again quickly.