Virtualization Team

As many of my customers are still on VMware ESX4 & not yet upgraded to ESX4U1, I get many complains about virtual machine console timeout error from web access for non administrator users. Yeah, I have already pushed an upgrade recommendation, but as usual most companies take more time approving the change request than to carry out the change. If you have VMware ESX4U1 & you are facing a problem & hit this page, then please ignore this post as this bug was fixed in update 1. If you want to read the VMware KB on this issue you should check out:

Accessing the console of a Windows virtual machine through Web Access in ESX 4.0 times out

Problem Symptoms:

When accessing the console of a Windows virtual machine through Web Access in ESX 4.0 you get the following time out error:

“Cannot access virtual machine console. The request timed out.”  an image snapshot of the error is below:

The above symptom is the common one I have always seen, but as per VMware KB there are many other symptoms that other customers had as below:

• You cannot open the console of a Windows virtual machine through vSphere Client Web Access.
• Opening the console of a Windows virtual machine through vSphere Web Access times out.
• Closing and reopening vCenter client does not fix problem.
• You see one or more of the following errors:
• • The attempt to acquire a valid session ticket for <virtual machine> took longer than expected.
  • Cannot access virtual machine console. The request timed out.

Resolution:

The easiest & best resolution for this problem is to upgrade to ESX 4U1, else if that is not possible you will need to follow up the work around below as documented per VMware KB:

In VMware ESX 4 & prior to ESX 4U1 Users must have Windows Administrator privileges to access a virtual machine’s console. If you do not have Windows Administrator privileges, opening a virtual machine console times out. You can perform other functions and operations if you have vCenter Server administrator privileges, but you cannot open a virtual machine console. To grant appropriate Windows permissions on your vCenter server to resolve this issue:

1. Log into the vCenter server with a user with Administrative privileges.
2. Click Start > Run, type compmgmt.msc, and click OK.
3. Temporarily place the user in the Local Administrators group.
4. Place a shortcut for that particular virtual machine on the desktop:
5. 1. While the user is in the Local Administrators group, log in to vCenter Server via Web Access.
   2. Click the virtual machine then the Summary tab.
   3. 
   4. Select the Generate Virtual machine desktop shortcut option.
   5. Click OK.
6. Return to vCenter Server and revert the changes to the user account.
7. Access the console of the virtual machine through the shortcut on the desktop.

Note: if after adding the user to the windows local administrator group he still can not access the console, restart the vCenter services & if that did not work then you might go as far as restarting vCenter.

I hope this article help many of you resolve the above problem as quickly as possible, as seeing the error caused by the issue you can not tell much about the error source.  Please leave your feedback in the command area below.