A server error occured [400] or vCenter Server ‘once upon a time’

After fixing a failed SSD of one of my lab-hosts I had some minor issues with my vCenter. Whenever I logged on into it I received this error.

vCenter error 400

“[400] An error occured while sending an authentication request to the vCenter Single Sign-On server – An error occured when processing the metadate during vCenter Single Sign-On setup – null.”

fair enough I checked the :5480 VAMI of my PSC and vCenter and the vCenter showed me the SSO was not initialized.


Screen Shot 2016-05-01 at 17.30.03

BUUUUT, I figured out that this message is completly ok as long as you are having a distributed installation with a dedicated Platform Service Controller (PSC) virtual machine.

–> Let’s grab some log-files of the webclient.

Screen Shot 2016-05-06 at 17.28.19

“the time now …. does not fall in the request lifetime interval extended with clock tolerance of 600000 ms: … This might be due to a clock skew problem.”

So what was the problem. My ESXi host had some time-differences within each other based on a longer-outage I had within my home-lab. When I replaced my SSD I did not adjusted my bios-clock and therefore my repaired ESXi host did not match the others. Now the chain reaction takes place. In my lab-environment the vCSA (vCenter and PSC) take their time via VMware-tools based on the ESXi host clock.

–> vCenter was running on ESXi 1 && PSC on ESXi 2 –> Time difference > 60 seconds

So verify your ESXi host are having the correct time –> Make sure you have vCSA time-sync configured via NTP or VMware tools and verify the correct settings via the VAMI.

VAMI VAMI

–> Once again it’s  always(97%) time and DNS :-)

Screen Shot 2016-05-06 at 23.53.27

 

5 thoughts on “A server error occured [400] or vCenter Server ‘once upon a time’

  • 3. December 2016 at 17:12
    Permalink

    you are absolutely right. in my case my psc and vcsa were out of time sync.
    it won’t even load the vcenter and i get [400]. error
    I synced the time and voila! it’s up again.

    Thank you so much

    Reply
  • 2. March 2017 at 10:50
    Permalink

    Just pointing out a type. It should be 600 Secs or 10 minutes for 600000 ms, isnt it?

    Reply
    • 5. March 2017 at 21:20
      Permalink

      You are absolutely right. My calculation skills without computer-aid seems to lack a little nowadays! Thx

      Reply
  • 2. August 2017 at 15:42
    Permalink

    Thanks for the tip. This was exactly my problem!

    Reply
  • Pingback: vCenter Server Appliance: “AFD Native Error Occured: 9127” – Chris Laplante's blog

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