[ID# 01970913] Vsphere VM tags canot be viewed or added

[axtx77]

Hi there

since the existing vcenter appliance (5.5>6u2, same ip, same fqdn) got updated, all our backups wich are configured with vsphere tags are not working anymore. Allthough the tag are in the vcenter, veeam throws the following error during each backup:
: Failed to obtain VCenter service registration info.

: Error: QueryAllCategoryInfos failed. Failed to initialize inventory service session Failed to obtain Vcenter service registration info.

Thanks for your reply!!

[foggy]

Have you tried to rescan the vCenter from Veeam B&R console?

[axtx77]

yes I have. I can add vms and datastores but no tags. The existing vsphere tags are also not recognised and due to that no backups are running..

[foggy]

What about the vCenter Inventory Service? Is it running, have you tried to restart it?

[axtx77]

I have allardy restarted the vcenter. All abjects (vms, tags, etc..) are there.

[foggy]

I'd still check the service itself and work with support further if this doesn't help.

[axtx77]

I have checkd the service itself as well and also restarted it again. no help.. Another intersting point on whihch i came is this veeam art. https://www.veeam.com/kb2136
Could it be that this would apply in my case? As the new vcenter appliance update perfroms a kind of configuration migration to new appliance and then sets the same configuration, name, ip, inventory etc..

[foggy]

This KB relates to the case where VM moref ID's change, which is likely not the case with the vCenter in-place upgrade.

[will.daw]

Did you find a solution to this? I recently upgraded to vSphere 6 and backup by tags too. All my jobs failed with "Error: Failed to obtain VCenter service registration info", but backups will work by manually adding VMs to a backup job by the "hosts & clusters", "VMs & Templates", "datastores", but will not filter or search through "Tags" on the vCenter Server without error. It throws an error "QueryAllCategoryInfos failed. Failed to initialize inventory service session Failed to obtain Venter service registration info" when I click on the tag option to add to a backup job. Any insight will appreciated.

[oliverL]

would love to get some information about this too - i also configured Backupjobs using Tags for the selection...

this would really suck if i have to redo all backupjobs again after a vcenter upgrade

[veremin]

Guys, have you already contacted our support team with that? Thanks.

[tsightler]

If you are getting the error noted in the original post on this thread, then this is a vCenter error and needs to be corrected. Check VMware KB 2127028 and follow the steps there. As noted in this KB, you can also verify if this is the issue by attempting to run the Get-TagCategory vPower CLI cmdlet. If this cmdlet fails then this is almost certainly the same problem.

[will.daw]

I opened a ticket (Case #02016669) with support yesterday morning and worked with them throughout the day. My ticket has be escalated to the next tier because inventory service is functional and I can run that powercli command with no errors. I complied with all the requests yesterday and I am hoping to hear back soon. Also, on my on accord I deployed a fresh server and install of Veeam 9.0 with only vCenter connection and it still returned that error. After, I upgraded that fresh install to Veeam 9.5 and still in the same condition.

[tsightler]

OK, keep us updated. In my experience, the error has always been something on the vCenter side, either with the KB I noted earlier, or expired certificates, or something that is keeping the Inventory service from properly registering. However, I can believe it might be something on the Veeam side that I've just never run across, so please keep us updated.

[will.daw]

Update - I have created Temp Jobs to keep backups going on critical VMs, but still working on resolving the Tag Issue. Like I stated before, my backup jobs and backup copy jobs are based upon tags. I was trying to work around having to do another Full Backup (space reasons) of everything.

Veeam Support - I worked with support and did some troubleshooting with the certificates and using different vCenter credentials to connect with. I was recommended to open a case with VMware because of the error "failed to initialize Inventory Service" message. It is what vCenter is kicking back to Veeam, so they wanted me to check with VMware and have them look into my vCenter logs.

VMware Support - That is still where I am at today. They reviewed my support bundle and there was no clear evidence of what the issue is. The inventory service is running and performing inside VMware with no issue as well. Support has logged in and restarted services and tried to capture logs as the jobs ran and so forth. This has been going on for a couple weeks (Holidays have played a part in this long time frame). Tonight I created a snapshot and deleted ALL tags and categories. That did not fix the issue, but then I went through this KB "How to reset Inventory Service database for vCenter Server Appliance 6.0 (2146248)" on the VMware site (recommended to do by VMware). That completed successfully, but the issue still remained in both Veeam 9.0 (production) and Veeam 9.5 (test production vm) servers. After rebooting the VMs (to verify a reboot wouldn't fix anything) I reverted back to the snapshot and back where I left off.

I have probably skipped out on a number of other attempts that were made to resolve this issue. The condition remains the same...

[will.daw]

This issue has been resolved. It turned out to be in the VCSA, the advanced setting was set to "VirtualCenter.FQDN = ipaddress" and not the FQDN. Changing that option from the IP Address to the FQDN immediately fixed the issue. Support was awesome and consistent in resolving this issue .

[neilmacneil]

Hi,

I just wanted to add my 2 cents. We've recently just upgraded from vsphere 5.5 to latest 6.5. The same issue happened to us, veeam would not query the tags and failed in the same manner explained in this thread. For us our "VirtualCenter.FQDN" was set to just our hostname. So obviously after adding our FQDN, also rescanned vcenter in veeam console, it fixed the issue. Thanks for the help!

-Neil

[Regnor]

I've justed stumbled over this one and it also was the FQDN, thanks

[lenart.plausteiner]

Hi folks.

We've strange problem with our environment. We're trying to implement backup JOBs with using vSphere TAGs and while trying to browse TAGs in Veeam B&R console we get an error "QueryAllCategoryInfos failed. Failed to obtain VCenter service registration info" after thath we searched in Svc.VeeamBackup.log we see entries like this: (hostname and GUID is changed)

[21.09.2021 19:18:51] <13> Error QueryAllCategoryInfos a3a9a9b8-cb14-4b5b-8574-2b99a6fsd376d:HOSTNAME.your.domain:443:bbbfefe3-4e16-4c45-bfdsff-27d01d8af256
[21.09.2021 19:18:51] <13> Error Veeam.Backup.Common.CustomStackException)
[21.09.2021 19:18:51] <13> Error System.Exception:
[21.09.2021 19:18:51] <13> Error at Veeam.Backup.ViSoap.CLookupServiceNodeClient..ctor(CSoapService service, ServiceContent serviceContent)
[21.09.2021 19:18:51] <13> Error at Veeam.Backup.ViSoap.CInventoryServiceImpl65.CreateVapiSessionConnection()
[21.09.2021 19:18:51] <13> Error at Veeam.Backup.ViSoap.CInventoryServiceImpl65..ctor(CServiceConnSpec connSpec, CSoapService service, ServiceContent serviceContent)
[21.09.2021 19:19:13] <129> Info [RTS] Resource dispatch iteration started.

We've opened a Veeam SR with case ID # 05035516.

Any ideas?

BR,
lenart

[foggy]

Hi Lenart, thanks for opening a case - please continue working with our support engineers. Meanwhile, you can review the hints in the thread above.

[lenart.plausteiner]

Hi Foggy, thanks.

To add some aditional information:
We use Veeam B&R v11 and vSphere 7.0.2 (ESXi and vCenter)
We've tried with vCenter rescan within Veeam and also with changing user used for connecting to vcenter.