Vmware inventory plugin error 'Unknown interface: com.vmware.cis.session' (Probably something simple)

Usually I am warm and comfy in my vCenters, but someone asked me to help them with their “put the show on the road” server.

We are trying to run our automation against a non-paid vSphere box, and I am trying to get inventory data off it, because I have some dependencies on data that comes from the inventory plugins.

I know this is probably something simple, dealing with the vSphere server. It’s the first time we’ve ever tried to run against the system. It’s basically shut down most of the year.

Here is my plugin config…

plugin: vmware_vm_inventory
strict: false
cache: true
cache_connection: /srv/inv/cache_that_stuff
hostname: somethin.somethin.local
username: someuser
password: someP@ssword
validate_certs: false
hostnames:
  - config.name
properties:
  - name
  - config.cpuHotAddEnabled
  - config.cpuHotRemoveEnabled
  - config.instanceUuid
  - config.hardware
  - config.template
  - config.name
  - config.uuid
  - guest.hostName
  - guest.ipAddress
  - guest.ipStack
  - guest.guestId
  - guest.guestState
  - guest.net
  - guest.disk
  - runtime.maxMemoryUsage
  - customValue
  - summary.runtime.powerState
  - config.guestId
  - summary.customValue
  - storage
  - snapshot
  - datastore
groups:
  windows: "'windows' in config.guestId"
  linux: "'windows' not in config.guestId"
  upgrade: true
  conf: true
  prod: true

  has_snapshots: snapshot is defined
keyed_groups:

  - key: summary.runtime.powerState
    separator: ""
  - key: cu_group
    parent_group: cus
  - key: tag_category.status
    separator: ""
  - key: tag_category.stec_role
    separator: ""
  - key: guest.hostName | regex_replace('^[^.]*[.]','') | regex_replace('[.].*$','')
    separator: ""
leading_separator: false
with_path: true
with_tags: true
compose:
  gateway: (guest.ipStack[0].ipRouteConfig.ipRoute | selectattr('network', 'eq', '0.0.0.0') | first).gateway.ipAddress
  ansible_host: guest.ipAddress
  prefix_length: (guest.net[0].ipConfig.ipAddress | selectattr('state', 'eq', 'preferred')

And here is the output.

[WARNING]:  * Failed to parse /home/gzelt/awx/conf/conf.vmware.yml with auto plugin: Failed to login to 192.168.222.105:443 using ansible due to
: {messages : [LocalizableMessage(id='vapi.provider.interface.unknown', default_message='Unknown interface: com.vmware.cis.session',
args=['com.vmware.cis.session'], params=None, localized=None)], data : None, error_type : None}
  File "/home/gzelt/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ansible/inventory/manager.py", line 293, in parse_source
    plugin.parse(self._inventory, self._loader, source, cache=cache)
  File "/home/gzelt/.local/lib/python3.10/site-packages/ansible/plugins/inventory/auto.py", line 59, in parse
    plugin.parse(inventory, loader, path, cache=cache)
  File "/home/gzelt/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/vmware/plugins/inventory/vmware_vm_inventory.py", line 677, in parse
    self.pyv.do_login()
  File "/home/gzelt/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/vmware/plugins/inventory/vmware_vm_inventory.py", line 436, in do_login
    self.rest_content = self._login_vapi()
  File "/home/gzelt/.ansible/collections/ansible_collections/community/vmware/plugins/inventory/vmware_vm_inventory.py", line 467, in _login_vapi
    raise AnsibleError(msg)

I think it is likely that we haven’t installed something or turned something on for the vSphere server. Again, it’s rarely ever used.

What do you mean with “non-paid vSphere box”? The free ESXi? (Not sure if it really exists still or if Broadcom killed it meanwhile or even VMware sometime in the past.)

Or do you mean the ESXi host is freshly installed and running an eval license?

Broadcom only recently purchased them. Like, I said, this only gets pulled out of the closet once a year for a conference.

I guess you might just rewind to two years ago. What would your answer have been then, lol?

Well, is it the free ESXi or not? IIRC there are some API limitations for the free ESXi that you might run into. I’m not sure, though…

Pulled out of the closet once a year? What ESXi version is it? And what community.vmware version are you using?

See above: ESXi and comunity.vmware version?

7.0 Update 3 for ESXI
community.vmware 3.7.0