XenDesktop Error: The hosting infrastructure could not be reached at the specified address

When trying to create a XenDesktop group that is using ESX 4/5 as the hosting infrastructure, or you’ve had to reinstall VMware vCentre you may receive the following error message:

“The hosting infrastructure could not be reached at the specified address.”

or

there is no virtual desktop activity i.e. power on/off as virtual desktops are being used when viewed in vCentre recent activity

The reason for this is because VMWare, vSphere, and the ESX host are configured to redirect http traffic to https by default.  Because the default certificate on ESX does not match the name of the server, it generates an error.

I found and used the following to rectify the issue:-

1. Log on to the vCenter Server system as the Windows Administrator of the machine.
2. Locate the vCenter proxy.xml file
   Win2k8: C:ProgramDataVMwareVMware VirtualCenterproxy.xml
   Win2k3: C:Documents and SettingsAll UsersApplication DataVMwareVMware VirtualCenterproxy.xml
3. Use a text editor and find the sections of the file associated with “/” and “/sdk”. Note: For XenDesktop 5.0, “/” is an additional requirement from XenDesktop 4 that will find provisioning desktops using MCS fail if they have not been changed.
4. Change the accessMode to httpAndHttps
   eg.

   <config>
   <EndpointList>
   <_length>15</_length>
   <_type>vim.ProxyService.EndpointSpec[]</_type>
   <e
   id=”0″>
   <_type>vim.ProxyService.NamedPipeServiceSpec</_type>
   <accessMode>httpAndHttps</accessMode>
   <pipeName>\.pipevmware-vpxd-webserver-pipe</pipeName>
   <serverNamespace>/</serverNamespace>

   </e>
   .  .
   <e
   id=”5″>
   <_type>vim.ProxyService.LocalServiceSpec</_type>
   <accessMode>httpAndHttps</accessMode>
   <port>8085</port>
   <serverNamespace>/sdk</serverNamespace>
   </e>

5. Save and exit the proxy.xml file.
6. Restart the service from a command line or from the Windows Services control panel, or reboot the vCentre server.