vCenter Tag Collection Reliability Improvements
The PowerCLI-based vCenter tag probe in the Discovery Application has been substantially improved to resolve several causes of silent connection failures and incomplete tag discovery. The changes address credential handling for special characters, untrusted certificates, immediate error reporting, longer execution windows for large inventories, and richer diagnostic logging.
Reliability improvements
The following improvements are now applied automatically by the Discovery Application:
| Improvement | Detail |
|---|---|
| Special character support in credentials | Passwords containing |, ", [, #, or ? are now safely quoted before being passed to PowerShell. Logins that previously failed with parsing errors now succeed. |
| Self-signed and untrusted certificate handling | Self-signed and untrusted vCenter certificates are automatically accepted for the session, removing a common cause of silent connection failures. |
| Immediate error reporting on connection failure | Connect-VIServer calls are now wrapped so failures are reported immediately with the real error, instead of hanging on Get-VMHost and tag-retrieval commands until timeout. |
| Extended execution window | The timeout has been increased from 60 seconds to 10 minutes, allowing tag discovery to complete on larger vCenter inventories that previously hit the limit. |
| Diagnostic logging | Logs now include credential resolution, the password-masked Connect-VIServer call, the PowerShell exit code, and a message when no working credential is found. |
Where the improvements appear
The effects of these improvements are visible in the following locations:
| Location | What changed |
|---|---|
| vCenter tag discovery results | Tags are now collected successfully for environments using special characters in credentials or self-signed certificates. |
| Discovery Application logs | Connection failures produce clear error messages instead of timeouts, so issues can be triaged from the logs alone. |
| Large vCenter inventories | Tag discovery completes fully without hitting the previous 60-second execution limit. |
Note: No action is required. All improvements take effect automatically after the Discovery Application is upgraded to v6.1.2. No configuration changes are needed.