Troubleshooting the vSphere 6.0 Client Integration Plugin when it fails to function

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
When attempting to use any of the workflows dependent on the Client Integration Plugin (CIP) with VMware vSphere 6.0, you experience these symptoms:

• When navigating to the vcsa-setup.html during vCenter Server Appliance deployment, your web browser is unable to detect or times out while trying to detect CIP.
  
  
• When analyzing the session through a debugging utility (example: Chrome Debugger), you see the entry:
  
  WebSocket connection to 'wss://vmware-localhost:8093/' failed: Error in connection establishment: net::ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED
  failed to open undefined
  
  
• The vmware-csd.exe process fails.
  
  
• When reviewing the Windows Application Event (eventvwr.msc) logs on the Windows operating system, you see entries similar to:

Faulting application name: vmware-csd.exe, version: 6.0.0.2799, time stamp: 0x54d1478a

Faulting module name: MSVCR90.dll, version: 9.0.30729.6161, time stamp: 0x4dace5b9

Exception code: 0x40000015

Fault offset: 0x0005beae

Faulting process id: 0x4970

Faulting application start time: 0x01d05ed4a2fa4fb8

Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\Client Integration Plug-in 6.0\vmware-csd.exe

Faulting module path: C:\Windows\WinSxS\x86_microsoft.vc90.crt_1fc8b3b9a1e18e3b_9.0.30729.6161_none_50934f2ebcb7eb57\MSVCR90.dll

Report Id: e0b25453-cac7-11e4-8916-005056a278a8

Environment

VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the user account attempting to run the CIP process has insufficient permissions on the Application Data files and directories.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, ensure that the user account attempting to use CIP has write permissions recursively on this directory as well as all files and all sub-directories:

%AppData%\Local\VMware\CIP

To enable permissions for your user account:

1. Open an Explorer Window.
2. Navigate to:
   
   %AppData%\Local\VMware\CIP
   
   
3. Right-click VMware directory and click Permissions.
4. Click the Security tab, click Edit.
5. Click Add.
6. In the Select Users, Computers, Service Accounts, or Groups Window, add your account that you used to log in to the Windows system.
7. Click OK.
8. In the Properties section, ensure Read and Write access have a check box under the Allow column.
9. Click OK.
10. Verify that all sub-directories have inherited this permission change.

Additional Information