Increasing vCenter Server timeout settings

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• You experience a time out when adding a host to vCenter Server
• Adding a host to vCenter Server fails
• vCenter Server times out
• When adding an ESX host to vCenter Server, you see the error:
  
  operation timed out

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x

Resolution

This issue can be resolved by increasing the timeout value in the VirtualCenter Management Server Configuration timeout settings from 30 to 60 seconds.

To increase the timeout value using the VMware Infrastructure Client:

1. For VirtualCenter 2.x, go to Administration > VirtualCenter Management Server Configuration. In the VirtualCenter Management Server Configuration dialog, click Timeout Settings.
   
   For vCenter Server 4.x and 5.x click Administration > vCenter Server Settings > Timeout Settings.
   
   
2. In the Normal Operations field, enter the timeout interval in seconds for normal operations.
3. Choose one of these options:
   
   
   • Click a link in the left pane of the dialog to make changes to another setting.
   • Click OK to accept all the setting changes you made and close the dialog.
   • Click Cancel to close the dialog without saving setting changes.
     
4. Restart vCenter Server for the changes to take effect.

To increase the timeout value using the vCenter Server database:

1. Launch Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio and connect to the database.
2. Navigate to your vCenter Server database click Tables.
3. Right-click dbo.VPX_PARAMETER and click Open Table.
4. In the dbo.VPX_PARAMETER table, set client.timeout.normal to 30 (default value).

To increase the timeout value using the VMware Web Client:

1. Login to the Web Client using an account with sufficient privileges to edit the Host Profile.
2. Click on vCenter Servers in the inventory listing.
3. Click on the vCenter Server you want to edit.
4. Open the Manage tab.
5. Under the Settings tab select General.
6. Click the Edit button.
7. Click on Timeout settings. From here you can change the timeout values.

Note: Storage and network operations that are known to take a long time to complete do not use the above timeout value. Instead, these lengthy operations have hard coded timeout value of up to 20 minutes.