Adding ESX Host to inventory of vCenter gets stuck at 80% and eventually fails with error "Error: Unable to connect because the username or password is incorrect"

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Unable to add/re-add ESX Host to vCenter inventory as the process fails at 80% and error seen is "Error: Unable to connect because the username or password is incorrect"
• License updates may have been performed prior to this changing from evaluation 
• For failed task to add ESX Host to vCenter environment you may see errors like below in vpxd.log file: 

####-##-##T##:##:##.###Z warning vpxd[#####] [Originator@#### sub=TrustedInfrastructure.HostConfig opID=########-#####-auto-###-##:########-##] [CreateOrUpdate] Policy with local user name vpxuser already exists on host ESX_IP. Exception: N4Vpxd7Clients22AlreadyExistsExceptionE(Error:
-->    com.vmware.vapi.std.errors.already_exists
--> No messages!
--> )

• ESX Host has no Hostname/FQDN configured 
• When checking /etc/hosts file on ESX Host we see no hostname is configured and contents will look similar to below: 

# Do not modify this file directly, please use esxcli.
# Any line beginning with a pound sign is a comment and will not be read.
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
::1            localhost.localdomain localhost

 

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.0

VMware vSphere 8.0

Cause

ESX Host has no valid Hostname configured

Resolution

• Update ESX to have a valid Hostname/FQDN and update DNS: How to change ESXi host name, FQDN and DNS server IP
• Retry adding ESX to vCenter inventory and this should now succeed 

Additional Information

Modifying host entry in /etc/hosts file for vCenter or ESXi host using vi editor