Some facts about vCenter Server Inventory Service

The Inventory Service uses some sort of XML database called xDB. Unfortunately, that database uses a flat file which ends in .log (which is stored on the filesystem of the VC) - during housekeeping, it is not uncommon for administrators to search for files that end in .log and to remove them.

The Inventory Service is used to search the VC inventory and it is used when checking the VC Service status. It was created to offload processing required to search inventory as the C# client hammers vpxd when searching.

By default, there are scripts that are installed on VC to backup and restore the IS database.

Under 5.0, the Inventory Service and vCenter Server both exist on the same machine. Under 5.1, vCenter Server and Inventory Service can exist on different machines.

After my digging, it appears a popular troubleshooting step is to reset the IS database. Our official documentation outlines how to do that:

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.install.doc_50%2FGUID-EBB03FB7-F1AE-433C-A78D-A0E345EB0986.ht ml

The instructions to reset the IS database are also supplied in KB article below:

Logging in to the vCenter Server 5.0 Web Client fails with the error: unable to connect to vCenter Inventory Service http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2017750

Under 5.0, it appears you can reset the DB with no adverse affects as the information in the database will repopulate - although I'm not sure how long that takes or how that is done.

Under 5.1, it appears the IS database includes new inventory tagging information although I believe this feature is not well known or used very often so most customers probably do not have any tagging information in their IS database.

In 5.5 the behavior still needs to be verified. If anyone has seen this they can leave a comment and I will update the post with 5.5.

Thanks for reading and share please !!

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vCenter Certificate Automation Tool 1.0

Recently with the introduction of SSO people find it difficult to manage SSL certificates with various VMware products. So based on the issues and other facts VMware has released today a new tool called "vCenter Certification Automation Tool version 1.0" which will help implementation of Custom certificates which can be mainly categorized in the following category

1. Secure token Service Certificate – Certificate used by vCenter Single Sign On (SSO) for encryption tokens
2. Solution User Certificates – Certificates used by each solution to identify themselves as users to SSO
3. SSL Certificates  – certificates needed for SSL communication for the UI and API layer
4. Host Certificates – These certificates are deployed in each ESXi host and used for secure vCenter to ESXi communication.

This tool will help configuring the SSL certificates for the following products

1. vCenter Server
2. vCenter Single Sign On
3. vCenter Inventory Service
4. vSphere Web Client
5. vCenter Log Browser
6. VMware Update Manager (VUM)
7. vCenter Orchestrator (VCO)

KB 2041600 is published which will discuss about the Tool in detail and you can find the blog post here.


You can download the Tool from here which will require you MyVMware Account credentials.

Hope you now have smooth experience while dealing with SSL certificates.

Lot of people are involved in developing this tool and Hats Off to all of them.

Please provide the feedback about the tool on the VMware blog post page.

Enjoy and share !!