NAT's + vCenter = BAD
Summary: vCenter was able to connect to and seemingly manage hosts fine, however when a user attempts to clone, an error "Cannot connect to server" is returned. NAT's are NOT SUPPORTED . That being said, here is what I did to track down what was causing this issue. Details: First I tailed the vpxa.log while I attempted a clone. What I found was actually quite interesting. When attempting the clone, @ some point w/ the destination IP of the ESX host was changed. It ended up targeting an IP to which I was unaware of what that IP might be. So I performed a traceroute from vCenter to the ESXi host. It turns out the IP was a firewall in the route. With the firewall IP in hand, I went to the firewall security team and had them check the settings. Turns out there was a source NAT setup that was causing me the errors. Once that was removed cloning worked w/ no problems. From my perspective as a VMware admin, I would have had no ide...