Linux – vCSA command line installer fails to deploy with the error “Failed to login to host… is not a VIM server”

centos6linuxpythonvmware-vcentervmware-vsphere

I'm using the vcsa-cli-installer utility under Linux (CentOS 6) to deploy VCSA 6.0 (vCenter Server Appliance). It is failing with the following:

# ./vcsa-deploy -v ~/full_conf.json

Start vCSA command line installer to deploy vCSA "vcsa.example.com", an embedded node.

Please see /tmp/vcsa-cli-installer-70USW3.log for logging information.

The SSO password meets the installation requirements.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/build/toolchain/lin64/cx-Freeze-4.3.3/lib/python2.7/site-packages/cx_Freeze/initscripts/Console.py", line 27, in <module>
  File "install.py", line 160, in <module>
  File "/build/mts/release/bora-2494545/bora/install/vcsa-installer/vcsaCliInstaller/util.py", line 130, in appliance_name_exist
  File "/build/mts/release/bora-2494545/bora/install/vcsa-installer/vcsaCliInstaller/esxvim_utils.py", line 93, in Init
esxvim_utils.CommunicationException: Failed to login to host vmhost1.example.com, as user root:vmhost1.example.com:443 is not a VIM server

(Real hostnames have been replaced for this post)

I have verified that the vSphere client under Windows can connect to the target vSphere (ESXi) server. I also used the Windows tool for deploying VCSA without issue.

Best Answer

The problem encountered here was caused by python or the vcsa-deploy utility attempting to use the proxy defined in the shell environment:

https_proxy=http://proxy.example.com:3128/

I ran vcsa-deploy with strace and saw that it was attempting to use that proxy.

I used the unset https_proxy command to temporarily disable that proxy, repeated the vcsa-deploy ~/full.json command and it was able to successfully connect to the vSphere host.

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