If you try to add an ESX 4.1 server to a vCenter 4.0 server one of two things will happen. First the initial connect will succeed but shortly after being connected the host will disconnect with no visible errors. If your lucky the second thing you may see is the actual error “A general system error occured: internal server error: vmodl.fault.HostCommunication”.

Unfortunately the only way to solve the problem (that I know of) is to upgrade the vCenter to 4.1, but beware… 4.1 is x64 only and as far as I know there is no 32bit version. If you do decide to upgrade remove host and then re-add as you normally would.

Personally, I am just going to reformat the server and install ESX 4.0 and perform the vCenter upgrade at later date then upgrade all the ESX servers.

Posted in VMware
Tags: ESX 4.1, vCenter 4.0