Recently, after an upgrade to my vCenter machine, I was left with a situation where a couple of things broke in vCenter Orchestrator. One of those was a broken password, forcing me to reset the password back to the default. The other was some corruption somewhere, ending up displaying the following error when I clicked on “Licensing” while configuring it post-upgrade:

vCO Licenses Tab Issue

Like everyone else, I learn more by fixing broken environments and find the challenge extremely exciting. However, sometimes you have to evaluate the learning gains versus the time spent. In this particular instance, I chose to reinstall the vCenter Orchestrator component as there is no “repair” option available. It’s not rocket science but I am documenting the reinstall in case someone else needs to do that too and isn’t too sure.

  • Go to https://<Server Name or IP>:8283
  • Click on “General” and then “Export Configuration” in the right-hand pane. Optionally, provide a password. I would recommend saving the configuration in a remote location, rather than the local drive. If you’ve been upgrading your vCenter over the years, you may also find the paths changed after the reinstall. So, having the configuration saved in a remote location is safer.

vCO Export Config

  • Go to “Programs” and click “Uninstall/Change” to uninstall vCO. It’s pretty uneventful with no complications.
  • Browse to the vCenter CD/ISO and go to “vCenter-Server\vCO”. You should only find a single file “vCenterOrchestrator.exe” there. Run it with administrative privileges.
  • Now, don’t be alarmed after seeing an InstallShield screen from the last decade. As long as it’s from the same CD as your vCenter, you’re good.

vCO Install

  • Your normal install also follows the default options so you can pretty much do a “Next… Next… Finish” install but feel free to change anything you would like to at this stage.
  • Once the install is finished, go back to https://<Server Name or IP>:8283 and login. This time, the password will have reset back to the default username and password. It will also require you to change the password at first login.
  • Go to “General” and then “Import Configuration” in the right-hand pane and import configuration by browsing to the file saved earlier.

vCO Import Config

  • This should bring back pretty much everything you had configured previously, including the imported certificates. The only thing I had to do was to re-establish SSO configuration but that might have been a glitch.
  • Go to “vCenter Server” and confirm that the original vCenter Server is there and configured.

vCO vCenter Config

That should bring the service back as it was before. However, I saw one problem. When going into the vCenter Orchestrator Client, I could only see the workflow library as it was before I upgraded i.e. despite the reinstall, the new stuff I was expecting wasn’t there. If you see the same, do the following extra steps:

  • Go to “Startup Options” and stop the service, if it’s running.
  • Go to “Plug-ins” and “Reload all plug-ins” and “Apply changes”

vCO Plug-Ins

  • Go back to “Startup Options” and start the service.

Once done, I went back to vCenter Orchestrator Client and all the new plug-ins that I was expecting, appeared without issues.

Well that concludes the reinstall process. Hopefully, you’ll never be in a position to require a reinstall but if you are, this might be of assistance!

Hope this helps!