vCenter 2.5 U4 – My take….

Posted on 5 mins read

Well I have been meaning to put up my experiences out on the web about what has happened with my attempts (and partial success) with the installation of vCenter 2.5 U4.

Now for me the nicest new additions in this update were:

  • Guest Operating System Customization Improvements
  • Performance Overview Charts

So I set out to install this update. Pretty straight forward. The install went smoothly – Database was upgraded – Update manager the whole works.

Then came the Performance overview plug-in. Instructions were pretty simple.

All seems to go ok – but then I ran into the problem which this KB article solved for me.

So now I have the plug-in working correctly – or at least I thought I did.

I was not getting some “chart cannot be displayed” errors on some of my hosts. (see below)

Working

Not Working

Some clusters would work – others would not. Some hosts in a cluster would work and others would not.

Now after some debugging of the issue I found:

  • The issue was consistent on the same hosts all the time.
  • No matter what I did (and tried all the relevant KB’s – and even re-installing vCenter from scratch – using the same DB) would not help.
  • In the stats.log from the vCenter server I was seeing:

When querying (via GUI) a working host the stats.log returns:

[30 Mar 09, 15:35:31] [INFO] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.action.ViClientRequestAction : Request: [:8086/statsreport/vicr.do">:8086/statsreport/vicr.do">https://<IPADDR>:8086/statsreport/vicr.do](https://<IPADDR>:8086/statsreport/vicr.do) ? &moref=HostSystem:host-11041&sessionId=9A123CFD8AA-058F-4068-AC7C-66C66C2BDC7F&locale=en_US&serviceUrl=https://<hostname>/sdk

[30 Mar 09, 15:35:31] [INFO] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.action.ViClientRequestAction : User (vmware_soap_session="AFCEC24C-1B37-414D-92E0-3523AC1BDED3F8") successfully authorized...

[30 Mar 09, 15:35:31] [INFO] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.action.ViClientRequestAction : Redirect to corresponig MO Action (HostSystem)...

[30 Mar 09, 15:35:31] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following metrics does not exist ini the VC: (swapinRate,average,3)

[30 Mar 09, 15:35:31] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following report will no be displayed because one of its metric s is not present in the VC:hostMemRatesReport [30 Mar 09, 15:35:31] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following metrics does not exist ini the VC: (maxTotalLatency,latest,3)

[30 Mar 09, 15:35:31] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following report will no be displayed because one of its metric s is not present in the VC:hostDiskTotalLatencyReport

When querying a non working host (via GUI) we get this is in the log

[30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [INFO] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.action.ViClientRequestAction : Request: [:8086/statsreport/vicr.do">:8086/statsreport/vicr.do">https://<ipaddr>:8086/statsreport/vicr.do](https://<ipaddr>:8086/statsreport/vicr.do) ? locale=en_US&timeRange=daily&startDate=-1&pageIndex=0&moref=HostSystem%3Ahost-3589&mode=home&sessionId=9ACFD8A2A-058F-4068-AC7C-66C626C2BDC7F&endDate=-1&pageSize=2&serviceUrl=https%3A%2F%2F<HOSTNAME>%2Fsdk

[30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [INFO] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.action.ViClientRequestAction : User (vmware_soap_session="AFCEC24C-1B37-414D-92E0-35AC1BDED3F8") successfully authorized...

[30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [INFO] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.action.ViClientRequestAction : Redirect to corresponig MO Action (HostSystem)...

[30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following metrics does not exist ini the VC: (swapinRate,average,3)

[30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following report will no be displayed because one of its metric s is not present in the VC:hostMemRatesReport [30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following metrics does not exist ini the VC: (maxTotalLatency,latest,3)

[30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [WARN] com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.util.JspHelper : The following report will no be displayed because one of its metric s is not present in the VC:hostDiskTotalLatencyReport [30 Mar 09, 15:34:44] [ERROR] **com.vmware.vim.stats.webui.chart.StatsChartServlet : Unable to generate performance chart image. Details: null**

**java.lang.NullPointerException**

When running a profiler on the SQL server side – I was able to catch the query (which is actually a very nice SQL query that will  give you the info that should be presented in the tab – but that is a different post..) When running the query against the SQL Database itself it was returning the data perfectly for all hosts – those that would present properly in the tab and those that would not present at all. When the tab would not display correctly on a host – then the query would not even be presented to the SQL database – which leads me to think that something screwy is going on with the JAVA or in the SQL tables here.

SR was opened with support.

The workaround that I was provided from support was to completely remove the host from the cluster and add it in again. Now this made me think – of course this would solve my problem. Because there is something not working correctly in one of the tables – and when you remove a host from the VC and add it in again, it receives a new ID – so of course this would solve the problem. New tables – new data – makes a lot of sense. But… What happens to all the historical data on the host once you remove it? You guessed right – GONE! – Forever!!!

So for me that workaround is not acceptable.

The problem is a known bug (or as the Support technician put it “Boog”) that currently does not have a solution and that will be fixed in the next release of vCenter (which I suppose will be the GA of vSphere).

Now something that worried me actually – and I still have not had the time to check it out thoroughly – was when I saw the release of vCenter Mobile Access, the charts that are displayed – seem to be very similar to what is displayed on the Performance Overview tab – so I am wondering if I will get the same problems when I get to install that. Will have to wait and see.

Life ain’t easy!!