VMware Releases vCenter 5.1 U1a

Tonight VMware released vCenter 5.1.0 U1a, which is a bugfix re-release of U1. A day or two after vSphere 5.1 U1 was out there was a warning regarding multi-domain authentication when a user was in a lot of groups. You can check out important information about the 5.1 U1a release here. It describes the multi-domain scenarios that didn’t work, and which ones do work in Update 1a.

Some errors that you could have seen with vSphere 5.1 U1 were:

The vSphere Client could not connect to "<vCenter Server name>". You do not have permission to login to the server: <servername>

In the vpxd.log, you see permissions errors similar
to:

2012-10-31T13:18:27.665-07:00 [02756 info 'Default' opID=DD905A5F-00000004-7] [Auth]: User DOMAIN
A\John.Smith

2012-10-31T13:18:27.681-07:00 [02756 info 'commonvpxLro' opID=DD905A5F-00000004-7] [VpxLRO] -- FINISH task-internal-671700 -- -- vim.SessionManager.login --
2012-10-31T13:18:27.681-07:00 [02756 info 'Default' opID=DD905A5F-00000004-7] [VpxLRO] -- ERROR task-internal-671700 -- -- vim.SessionManager.login: vim.fault.NoPermission:
--> Result:
--> (vim.fault.NoPermission) {
--> dynamicType = <unset>,
--> faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
--> object = 'vim.Folder:group-d1',
--> privilegeId = "System.View",
--> msg = "",
--> }
--> Args:
-->

Given the frequent patch updates to vSphere 5.1, I would strongly urge extremely thorough testing in a lab environment before putting it into production.