Ansible troubleshooting - VMware Unknown error while connecting to vCenter or ESXi Today we’re going to talk about Ansible troubleshooting, specifically about the “Unknown error while connecting to vCenter or ESXi API, [Errno -2] Name or service not known” message and enable Ansible For VMware. This fatal error message happens when the Ansible controller is not able to connect to your VMware Infrastructure. The root cause might be a misspelled hostname in your Ansible Playbook, a connection problem connecting eventually using a secure VPN connection, or a configuration on the firewall on the target host. I’m Luca Berton and welcome to today’s episode of Ansible Pilot. ## Playbook How to reproduce, troubleshoot, and fix the error: “Unknown error while connecting to vCenter or ESXi API [Errno -2] Name or service not known” In this Playbook, I’m going to reproduce the error and fix using the correct VMware hostname and verify the network configuration on a demo machine. Let’s suppose our infrastructure is accessible at the hostname “vmware.example.com”. Later in this Playbook, we’re going to see the misspelled “vm-ware.example.com”. error code - vm_info.yml ```yaml --- - name: info vm Playbook hosts: localhost become: false gather_facts: false collections: - community.vmware pre_tasks: - include_vars: vars.yml tasks: - name: get VM info vmware_guest_info: hostname: "{{ vcenter_hostname }}" username: "{{ vcenter_username }}" password: "{{ vcenter_password }}" datacenter: "{{ vcenter_datacenter }}" validate_certs: "{{ vcenter_validate_certs }}" name: "{{ vm_name }}" register: detailed_vm_info - name: print VM info ansible.builtin.debug: var: detailed_vm_info ``` - vars.yml ```yaml --- vcenter_hostname: "vm-ware.example.com" vcenter_datacenter: "vmwaredatacenter" vcenter_validate_certs: false vcenter_username: "username@vsphere.local" vcenter_password: "MySecretPassword123" vm_name: "myvm" vcenter_destination_folder: "myvm" vm_template: "mytemplate" ``` - inventory ```ini localhost ``` error execution ```bash $ ansible-playbook vm_info.yml [WARNING]: provided hosts list is empty, only localhost is available. Note that the implicit localhost does not match 'all' PLAY [info vm Playbook] ******************************************************************************* TASK [include_vars] ******************************************************************************* ok: [localhost] TASK [get VM info] ******************************************************************************** fatal: [localhost]: FAILED! => {"changed": false, "msg": "Unknown error while connecting to vCenter or ESXi API at vm-ware.example.com:443 : [Errno -2] Name or service not known"} PLAY RECAP **************************************************************************************** localhost : ok=1 changed=0 unreachable=0 failed=1 ski