VpxClient logging can be helpful

This week I’m delivering one of the first VMware vSphere ICM courses in the Netherlands. Everything is going great but one of my students had some problems when he tried to connect with the vSPhere client to an ESXi server. The error message was “unable to connect to the remote server” even though he could ping the server. I told him to start the vSphere-Client with the following options.

VpxClient.exe -log +sd

After investigating the log files at: C:\Users\Paul Smit\AppData\Local\VMware\vpx vi-client.txt, Paul Smit found the following error.

[viclient:Error   ] 2009-07-07 13:15:14.930  RMI Error Vmomi.ServiceInstance.RetrieveContent - 2
<Error type="VirtualInfrastructure.Exceptions.ConnectionError">
  <Message>The request failed because of a connection failure. (Unable to connect to the remote server)</Message>
  <InnerException type="System.Net.WebException">
    <Message>Unable to connect to the remote server</Message>
    <InnerException type="System.Net.Sockets.SocketException">
      <Message>The attempted operation is not supported for the type of object referenced</Message>
      <ErrorCode>10045</ErrorCode>
      <NativeErrorCode>10045</NativeErrorCode>
      <SocketErrorCode>OperationNotSupported</SocketErrorCode>
    </InnerException>
    <Status>ConnectFailure</Status>
  </InnerException>
  <Title>Connection Error</Title>
  <WebExceptionStatus>ConnectFailure</WebExceptionStatus>
  <SocketError>OperationNotSupported</SocketError>
</Error>

After some Binging the Resolution was a WinSock repair.:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/811259 (WinSock Repair)
(via: http://www.devnewsgroups.net/group/microsoft.public.dotnet.framework/topic51407.aspx)