PCNS - Authenticated into vSphere but failed against individual hosts

[chiller15]

I work in the education sector and we have a Smart-UPS RT 6000 RM XL, running using firmware revision 452.19.W. It is configured to connect into our VMware vSphere (6.7.0.53000) to perform automated shutdowns of our VM infrastructure. In vSphere, I'm using a newly created service account for PCNS, configured as a global administrator for the whole cluster. In the PCNS interface, it reports it is authenticated and pulls the list of available VMs. Checking the vSphere logs, I can see it logs into vSphere without issues. However, vSphere add an error log for each host, which reads: "Cannot login VSPHERE.LOCAL\<account name>@<ip address>. I can confirm that the credentials I am using are correct, as it can log into vSphere itself without issues, just not the individual hosts. I have also confirmed that each host has propagated the global admin service account down to it.

Is this error something that I can ignore, since it has access to vSphere, or should it also have access to each host?

[BillP]

@chiller15 

PowerChute requires connection to each host to facilitate the host shutdown unless vCenter is not powering off. 

The shutdown process is

VM migration

Hosts enter maintenance mode

VM/vApp shutdown

vCenter is powered down

Hosts are powered down

Once vCenter has powered down, PowerChute will use the credentials to connect to each host.

For assistance with creating and configuring an account, PowerChute will use see Schneider Electric FAQ FA413356 https://www.se.com/ww/en/faqs/FA413356/

[chiller15]

Hi @BillP, thanks for your response. I had assumed that adding the permission in vSphere would also give full admin permissions to the individual hosts, but apparently not!

I have set the vsphere.local domain as default and created a local admin account (using the steps in your linked videos - ensuring I'm copy/pasting the username/password and propgate to children was checked). However, I am still receiving the same error message in the vSphere event logs, saying "Cannot login VSPHERE.LOCAL\<powerchute-admin>@<Powerchute VM IP Address>"