four issues I encountered deploying vCenter and SRM 5.5 in a Windows environment

My Experience Deploying vCenter and Site Recovery Manager 5.5

Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value. - Louis L’Amour

The virtualization community, like many others, exibits a very generous spirit of giving. The knowledge that we each possess, perhaps acquired through our own experiences, evolves as we circulate it with others.

After being virtually off the social grid for the past month, I decided to resume my activity by sharing some installation ‘gotchas’ that I encountered while deploying vCenter and Site Recovery Manager 5.5.

Please note: these solutions are all based on VMware KBs (noted below) and were tested against vCenter Server and Site Recovery Manager 5.5 running on Windows Server 2012, with SQL Server 2012 SP1 supporting databases.

Although relatively minor issues, I hope that you may found this useful and may avoid some of the same headaches that I encountered.

Connecting to vSphere Web Client Fails

Symptom:

HTTP Status 404

Solution:

When installing the vSphere Web Client, maintain the default installation directory.

Avoid installing this component to an alternate drive or location (i.e. D:) [1].

Encountered a Perl Error While Installing SRM

Symptom:

SRM installation fails with the following message: “Failed to update Perl installation directories…”

Solution:

When specifiying the installation directory for SRM, avoid using long path names or spaces. Instead, use short paths: (i.e. D:\SRM) [2].

Storage Monitoring Service Fails

Symptom:

This issue can present itself in a few different ways, but it is very evident when looking at the overall health of the vCenter Server from the Server Status screen.

Solution:

This may be encountered when a custom service account is being used to start the vCenter Server, instead of the default Local System account.

Ensure that the VMware vSphere Profile-Drive Storage Service is also being run using the same service account as the VMware VirtualCenter Service [3].

Update Manager Fails to Start

Symptom:

The VMware Update Manager service fails to start when using an SQL Server 2012 database, and the log may contain: “Panic: Unable to allocate memory”.

Solution:

After installing VUM using the native ODBC client, I was able to initially connect to Update Manager using the the vSphere Client; however, at some point I began to consistently see this issue.

To work around this, I removed the native SQL Server ODBC DSN for the VUM database, and replaced it with the non-native client.

This solution may seem a bit counter intuitive, but it is based on a VMware KB [4].

Keep on virtualizing.

References:

[1]“VMware KB: Connecting to vSphere Web Client fails with the error: HTTP Status 404.” [Online]. Available: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2044953. [Accessed: 09-Apr–2014].

[2]“VMware KB: Installing Site Recovery Manager fails with the error: Failed to update Perl installation directories.” [Online]. Available: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1028918. [Accessed: 09-Apr–2014].

[3]“VMware KB: VMware vCenter Storage Monitoring Service fails with the error: Service initialization failed after upgrading to vCenter 5.5.” [Online]. Available: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2060967. [Accessed: 09-Apr–2014].

[4]“VMware KB: VMware vSphere Update Manager 5.x fails to start when using SQL Server 2012.” [Online]. Available: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2050256. [Accessed: 09-Apr–2014].