vCenter settings of a VMware Horizon View desktop pool displays the error message: “Cannot find host or cluster for this desktop pool.”

Problem

You’ve noticed that one of the vCenter settings of a VMware Horizon View desktop pool displays is highlighted in red:

Clicking into the vCenter Settings tab displays the following error message:

Cannot find host or cluster for this desktop pool.

Clicking on the Browse… button for the Host or cluster setting displays the following error message:

Solution

The reason why the pool exhibits this behavior is because the configured vCenter settings no longer match the vCenter currently hosting the virtual desktops. A common issue I’ve come across in environments is when the Datacenter or the Cluster object has been renamed and no longer matches what was originally configured and reference within VMware Horizon View. Logging onto the vCenter hosting the virtual desktops show the following:

Putting the vCenter and View configuration tab side by side shows how the vCenter Datacenter object is now named Wellesley House while the one in View is named Wesley House:

The quickest way to resolve this issue is to rename the object in vCenter to match VMware Horizon View’s configuration but if this is going to be a permanent change then the alternative is to edit the VMware Horizon View ADAM database to correct the issue as demonstrated in the following KB:

Provisioning a pool on VMware View generates error: Resource Cluster ‘vcenter/host/clustername/Resources’ not found for pool (2127993)

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2127993

Begin by logging onto one of the VMware Horizon View connection server and launching ADSIedit then click on Action and Connect to…:

Fill in the fields in the Connection Settings as such:

Name: View ADAM Database

Select or type a Distinguished Name or Naming Context: dc=vdi,dc=vmware,dc=int

Select or type a domain or server: localhost:389

Navigate into the database and select the OU=Server Groups object to list the desktop pools:

Right click on the desktop pool and select the properties option:

Locate the following attributes:

pae-VmTemplateName < this is the Template configuration

pae-VmPath < this is the VM folder configuration

pae-VmResourcePool < this is the Resource pool configuration

pae-VmDatastore < this is the Datastores configuration

Next, manually type in the correct string mapping to the objects in vCenter (do not simply clear them as you will not be able to load any of the settings for the pool):

With the configuration updated, the pool should no longer display an error message: