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Quick Tip - Connect-OMServer throws The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel.

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While doing some work with PowerCLI and vRealize Operations Manager (vROps), I ran into the following error message when trying to connect to my vROps instance using PowerCLI:

Connect-OMServer : 2/17/2017 5:27:50 AM Connect-OMServer The request was aborted: Could not create SSL/TLS secure channel.
At line:1 char:1
+ Connect-OMServer -Server vrops.primp-industries.com -User admin -Password VMware ...
+ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+ CategoryInfo : NotSpecified: (VMware.VimAutom...tionServiceImpl:OMConnectionServiceImpl) [Connect-OMServer], OMException
+ FullyQualifiedErrorId : OM_ConnectivityServiceImpl_ConnectOMServer_ByUserNameAndPassword_ConnectError,VMware.VimAutomation.vROps.Commands.Cmdlets.ConnectOMServer

Although there were some hits on Google, none of the suggestions has worked. I had also found that this issue was only happening in one of my lab environments which was running Windows 2008 R2, for my other system which had Windows 8.1, the issue was not observed.

I had reached out to the PowerCLI Engineering team and it looks like the issue is due to a change in the hashing algorithm (SHA512) that vROps uses for its SSL Certificates. When using TLS 1.2, SHA512 is not supported by default. The fix is to simply install the following patch here which will resolve the problem.

Extracting VIN (vSphere Infrastructure Navigator) information using PowerCLI & vROps REST API

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A request that I continue to receive from customers on a fairly regular basis is a way to extract the virtual machine application services and dependencies that is provided by vSphere Infrastructure Navigator (VIN) solution. Below is an example of what a VIN discovery might look like and in this case, it is actually mapping out the application and dependencies of itself.


Today, there is not a public API for VIN and although I have published several methods here, here and here on how to extract the information from VIN, the experience is still not very user friendly or easy to do.

Last week, while talking to a fellow colleague who works in our VMware Validated Design team, I found out that VIN actually has a vRealize Operations Manager (vROps) Management Pack and could potentially be useful in helping us retrieve the information generated by VIN.


Not having spent much time with vROps Management Packs, I understood at a high level they provided custom dashboards for vROps, but I was not sure if the data provided by the management packs could also be retrieved programmatically? It has also been some time since I have looked at the vROps REST API and specifically the "public" REST API which allows customers to retrieve the metrics collected from within vROps.

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How to purge all logs in vRealize Log Insight?

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I had just deployed a new vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) 4.0 instance in my home lab environment to investigate a behavior that I was seeing with another product, non-vRLI related. Due to the nature of the work, I needed to have a pristine vRLI environment each time to study the results. I had already forwarded some logs into vRLI and rather than deploying another instance or re-deploy the current instance, what I really wanted to be able to do is to just wipe all the logs in vRLI but did not see an option within the UI. I also could have used VM snapshots, but was hoping there was a cleaner solution that vRLI provided out of the box.

The next place I looked immediately after was Mr. Log Insight's site aka Steve Flanders blog but there was nothing there about this other than archiving. After a few Google searches, I came across this exact same question on the vRLI Ideas site but sadly there was no solution and it was dated back in 2014. Though Steve makes a good point about just letting the logs rotate out automatically, in my case, this was not an option and I needed a pristine environment.

Being the curious one, I figured there has to be a way, even if it is not officially recommended nor supported. As you probably have guessed, I did find a way but I would caution that you read the disclaimer below before proceeding further. This was something I needed to do in my lab to test a few scenarios that was non-vRLI related, but I needed syslog target, so this is why I am using vRLI 🙂

Disclaimer: This is probably not officially supported nor recommended by VMware. Please use at your own risk. YOU WILL LOSE ALL YOUR LOGS

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