VCenter Server shows error on Hardware Status for hosts

Question

I'm running VMware ESXi on two Dell PowerEdge R610 servers, with a third server, a PowerEdge R410 running vCenter Server. We have an Essentials license.

In the past I used to be able to open vCenter Server, select a host, and open the Hardware Status tab to see the various sensors, fan speeds, etc.

Now, that no longer works. On each server, I get a popup message "An error occurred, please try again in another vSphere session." and I can't resolve the error. Whatever I try, 'Update', 'Reset sensors', rebooting vCenter, rebooting hosts, nothing helps. I always get that error.

When I connect the vSphere Client directly to an individual host I can see the Health Status just fine, on the Configuration tab of the host. Which leads me to believe the problem is with vCenter. The problem could have appeared after the 4.0 to 4.0u1 update, but I'm not sure since I only noticed it weeks later.

• vCenter version is 4.0.0 build 258672
• ESXi version is 4.0.0 build 261974

Update Manager shows all hosts are up-to-date.

I don't know what else to try. What can I do?

Solution

Sounds like some sort of plugin error. Based on the following knowledgebase articles from vmware, I would take these steps:

Verify the error in the viclient.log Ensure that port 8443 is open from your VI client to the vCenter server. Possibly check DNS name resolution to the vcenter server, FQDN and hostname.

Comments

[Atulmaharaj]

You were right. I renamed the vCenter server hostname a while back and apparently needed to set the new name in some advanced vCenter Server settings. Particularly the KB article kb.vmware.com/kb/1014213 was helpful. I had to modify the VirtualCenter.VimApilurl and VirtualCenter.VimWebServicesUrl settings.