When creating a Machine Creation Services (MCS) catalog on VMware infrastructure using a Machine Profile, the operation fails with an authorization error.

Error Message

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized

Exception while reading VM metadata from machine profile:

Failed to Create VMware Session.

HTTP Status Code: 401 - Unauthorized

Creation of the MCS catalog without using Machine profile will succeed. Additionally, the administrator may be able to access the Machine Profile template file via vcenter using the same account that was used during the catalog creation. Manually testing the rest API call using the same username and password may also succeed:

curl.exe -k -v -X POST https://vcenterfqdn/api/session -u <username:password>

The problem is due to a bug in the Vmware plugin included in the Cloud Connector. It uses ASCII encoding for password handling. Administrators will notice the problem if the account used for the Vmware Hosting connection has a password containing non-ASCII characters. 

Examples of problematic characters

Currency symbols: £ € ¥
Accented characters: ä ö ü ñ
Other regional/non-ASCII characters

The current workaround is to use a password containing strictly ASCII characters only for the account used with the Vmware Hosting connection.

A permanent fix for this issue will be included in the next release of Cloud Connector .

When creating a Machine Creation Services (MCS) catalog on VMware infrastructure using a Machine Profile, administrators may see that the operation fails with an authorization error.

HTTP/1.1 401 Unauthorized

Creation of the MCS catalog without using Machine profile will succeed. Additionally, the administrator may be able to access the Machine Profile template file via vcenter using the same account that was used during the catalog creation. Manually testing the rest API call using the same username and password may also succeed:

curl.exe -k -v -X POST https://vcenterfqdn/api/session -u <username:password>

Curl uses UTF8 encoding for handling password and hence does not show the problem when using a password with non-ASCII characters.