Troubleshooting

I encountered another fun adventure recently while upgrading some VMware Horizon 8 Connection Servers to version 2306. The upgrade process itself went smoothly, as you would expect. The installer processed the upgrade and stated that it was completed successfully. I attempted to access the VMware Horizon Administrator web console and found it would not process my smartcard authentication. I then tried to authenticate using an account with a password assigned, and again, the authentication was unsuccessful.

After recently upgrading the VMware Horizon Connection Servers in a VDI environment I am new to managing, end users complained that they could no longer access their virtual desktops. They stated that when they connected via the VMware Horizon Client for Windows, they received an HTTP 421 error similar to the screenshot below. VMware Horizon Windows Client Showing HTTP 421 Error Honestly, I had never heard of the HTTP 421 error code, so I had to look it up.

During recent testing that I was completing within my home lab, I was repeatedly creating and decommissioning VMware vSAN configurations within a single cluster. The first time I completed this process, I was decommissioning a VMware vSAN OSA configuration prior to creating a new VMware vSAN ESA configuration on the cluster. When I went through the process and reached the portion to specify the disks, I found that the disks were unavailable for claiming.

After testing a recent upgrade to VMware vCenter Server 7.0 Update 3i, I encountered an issue where the vCenter Server would no longer authenticate users via smart cards/X.509 certificates. The vCenter Server would not even request a certificate from the client’s browser anymore. This seemed odd as the functionality worked fine on the previous 7.0 Update 3h. Surely VMware wouldn’t make a breaking change within a minor patch release? After reverting the upgrade and testing that it wasn’t an issue with the upgrade process itself, a support ticket was opened with VMware support.

Recently, while attempting to change some settings on several instances of vRealize Orchestrator embedded within vRealize Automation 8.8.1 appliances, I found that I could not successfully authenticate to the vRealize Orchestrator Control Center interface. The interface is located at https://[vRA URL]/vco-controlcenter and requires that you provide the “root” user credentials to access it. Although I could authenticate to the virtual appliance consoles using the “root” credentials, I could not successfully authenticate to the vRealize Orchestrator Control Center interface.