Unable to Delete vCenter Endpoint in vRealize Automation

vRealize Automation Error

More than once in my experience I’ve had a need to delete an endpoint in vRealize Automation. Maybe configuration has changed or you simply made a typo in vCenter hostname or credentials. Once you’ve specified vCenter address and saved the endpoint you can no longer change it (only delete and re-add).

But even when you try to delete it, you will get an error something along the lines of:

You cannot delete this endpoint because 1 compute resources and 0 storage paths use it.

CloudClient Error

There is a KB article that walks you through the process of how to do that using a special tool called CloudClient: Error “This endpoint is being used by # compute resources and # storage paths and cannot be deleted” when you attempt to delete an endpoint in vRA 7.x (2150548)

But even that approach not always work. When you run this command from the KB article “vra computeresource inactive list” you may get the following error:

Error: Something went wrong while processing your request. Please check the application logs for details.

Solution

There is almost no mention of this second error on the Internet and I can see how someone can keep banging his head trying to solve it, so I thought I’d share a solution here. And it’s simple – open a GSS ticket. They can delete the endpoint for you. If you see this error, there’s no other way that I know of to solve this problem without involving GSS.

Clean-up

You can see an error similar to the following in vRA logs if you didn’t stop proxy agents before deleting the endpoint:

Error processing ping response
Error occurred while executing stored proc usp_InsertUpdateHost The INSERT statement conflicted with the FOREIGN KEY constraint “FK_ManagementEndpoint_Host”. The conflict occurred in database “vRa_IaaS”, table “dbo.ManagementEndpoints”, column ‘ManagementEndpointID’.
The statement has been terminated.
Inner Exception: The INSERT statement conflicted with the FOREIGN KEY constraint “FK_ManagementEndpoint_Host”. The conflict occurred in database “vRa_IaaS”, table “dbo.ManagementEndpoints”, column ‘ManagementEndpointID’.
The statement has been terminated.

All you need to do to get rid of it is restart your proxy agents.

Conclusion

Hope this post saves someone the hassle of hours searching for the answer in blogs and forums.

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vSphere Installation Error 1603

When installing vSphere client from ESXi server you can encounter an error:

The Microsoft .NET Framework  3.0 SP1 installer return code ‘1603’.

That’s what VMware site tells about that:

vSphere Client installation might fail with Error 1603 if you do not have an active Internet connection:

You can install the vSphere Client in two ways: from the vCenter Server media or by clicking a link on the ESX, ESXi, or vCenter Server Welcome screen. The installer on the vCenter Server media (.iso file or .zip file) is self-contained, including a full .NET installer in addition to the vSphere Client installer. The installer called through the Welcome screen includes a vSphere Client installer that makes a call to the Web to get .NET installer components.

If you do not have an Internet connection, the second vSphere Client installation method will fail with Error 1603 unless you already have .NET 3.0 SP1 installed on your system.

Workaround: Establish an Internet connection before attempting the download, install the vSphere Client from the vCenter Server media, or install .NET 3.0 SP1 before clicking the link on the Welcome screen.

In my case I had restricting rule on proxy server which didn’t allow me to access Microsoft site for automatic .NET download. But loosening restrictions didn’t solve the issue. I installed Framework .NET manually version 3.5 SP1.