No Vcenter server in Vsphere client

Mikdilly

Installed Vcenter server in Vsphere 5.1, can log into Web client and see vcenter server but when logging into vsphere client with same username as web client, cannot see any vcenter server. Any thing need to be done to get vcenter server to show up in vsphere client?

Essendon

You need to logon to the vCenter server. So type in the name of the vCenter server and use the admin account creds to get in.

jibbajabba

You won't see a list of vCenter like you do on the webclient. Once you logged into the vCenter using the name / IP, you will only see it on the top level on the left hand side, rather than in a specific view.

Tommy_D

The first time I used vCenter I made the mistake of trying to login the same way as you would with a normal vSphere host. Like the others before me said, if you enter the vcenter server name/IP and (depending on your environment) use your domain credentials you should see everything...

Mikdilly

Little confused, in the book by Scott Lowe, says you access vcenter thru vsphere client, even shows screen shots of hosts and clusters in vsphere client, don't remember giving vcenter a name or ip during setup, just found a page in his book that says after completing vcenter server installation, connect to vcenter's servers url and install vsphere client, the vsphere client connected to vcenter server should be the primary mgt tool for managing esxi hosts, maybe this is what i need.

dave330i

Mikdilly wrote: »

Little confused, in the book by Scott Lowe, says you access vcenter thru vsphere client, even shows screen shots of hosts and clusters in vsphere client, don't remember giving vcenter a name or ip during setup, just found a page in his book that says after completing vcenter server installation, connect to vcenter's servers url and install vsphere client, the vsphere client connected to vcenter server should be the primary mgt tool for managing esxi hosts, maybe this is what i need.

You can use vSphere Client to connect to ESXi hosts & vCenter Server. To connect to either, you need to enter the FQDN or IP address, user name & password. FQDN & IP address of vCenter Server is the server name & IP address of the VM you installed vCenter.

Mikdilly

dave330i wrote: »

You can use vSphere Client to connect to ESXi hosts & vCenter Server. To connect to either, you need to enter the FQDN or IP address, user name & password. FQDN & IP address of vCenter Server is the server name & IP address of the VM you installed vCenter.

Thanks, think this should clear it up, and thanks to others for replies, maybe now I can finally get moving thru the rest of the book.

jibbajabba

Here an example.

my vCenter server is cunningly called 'vcenter' and the domain 'vsphere.local'
my esx host(s) are called 'esx-1', 'esx-2' and so on. Here as example 'esx'

So two components

vcenter.vsphere.local
esx.vsphere.local

Here logged in using the web client



You can see a list of vCenter and general hirachie

And here connected using the client to both, vcenter and host directly



Hope it makes a little bit more sense now ...

jibbajabba

Oh and when you login to a host which is currently managed by a vCenter - you should even get a cunning message reminding you

Mikdilly

Have gotten Vcenter server installed and have 2 hosts in it, migrated an XP vm from 1 host to another, the vm was working and able to communicate on the network before it was migrated, after being migrated it now comes up with Limited or no connectivity, can't get it to connect to network. Tested Mgt network on host, can ping gateway, dns and dhcp but get nothing from the XP vm. Have another XP vm created on same host, it has same network problem. Checked the standard switch in networking on host, shows as what's on attachement below.

Migrated 1 of the Xp vm's to other host and it connects to network with no problem. What needs to be checked on other host to get network working?

Essendon

Make the other NIC active. Looks like a routing issue. It's probably using the NIC that's in standby.

jibbajabba

Shouldn't use the nic in standby really ... if you migrate the VM back - is the connectivity restored ? Do you have easy physical access to the server ? Can you post the config of both hosts ? When you check the properties of the portgroup "VM Network" - does it show the same discovered IP range ? Is your physical network based on Cisco ? The blue icon right next to the vmnics - should show you the discovered Cisco settings using CDP - click on it and compare the settings with both hosts. How are the two physical ports configured ? Portchannels ?

But yea - you could simply switch the vmnics and see if it makes a difference or swap the physical RJ45 cable between the host and see if the problem "follows around".

dave330i

Port group name is case sensitive. If the VM port group name in both esxi hosts don't match, you can run into this problem.

Mikdilly

Went into Nic teaming in vswitch properties on host that holds vm that won't connect, moved standby adapter up to active, vm is now connected. Is it ok to have both active? In comparing networking between the the 2 hosts, the host that has both adapters active has an ip ranges that change, first started off as 192.168.0.224 - 192.168.0.254, now shows as 224 to 239, vmnic0 has vlan1 at the end of the ip range, this was the previous only active adapter on the host, was the vlan id taking down the network, the other host has an ip range of 192.168.0.235 - 192.168.0.235 with no vlan ids at the end of either vmnic.

Essendon

It's okay to have both NIC's active, in fact that's how you should have it for load balancing purposes. You can remove the VLAN and it should all be still good.