Sorry forgot to give info about my setup

VMWare Esxi 5.0.0 managed by VSphere (VMware vCenter Server 5.0.0.16964)
CentOS release 6.2 (Final)
Foreman 1.2 RC3

/bin/cat <<EOF> /usr/share/foreman-installer/foreman_installer/answers.yaml
foreman_proxy:
tftp: true
dhcp: true
puppetrun: true
dns: true
puppetca: true
puppetmaster: true
puppet: true
foreman:
db_manage: true
passenger: true
ssl: true
EOF

Described below are the actions/steps that I perform when encountering the error.
1. Login as admin.
2. Create new compute resource
3. Load datacenter shows the datacenter that I need. (Test connection also succeeds)
4. View virtual machines tab in computer resource also shows virtual machines available in datacenter/cluster
5. I create a new host
6. Datacenter to deploy host on shows the the CJIB datacenter
7. In virtual machine tab cluster thuis is listed and already selected
8. I complete the vm's configuration OS, Network and vm details.
9. Press the submit button and get the save error.
10. Press submit a second time. No error and vm is created in foreman and vmware.

If I choose cancel at step 9. instead of submit and then create a new vm with steps 1 to 9, then also no error occurs and vm is created in foreman and vmware.

It only happens with the first vm that I try to create. It looks like it doesn't has datacenter/cluster info (although its showing it) needed for creating the vm until I hit Submit or cancel on first vm creation.

I think this one can be closed.
Tried a fresh install + configuration.
This time I waited 10 minutes before I created the first new host after I finished the configuration.
No errors this time.

It's strange but it seems the problem was caused by doing installation, configuration and new host creation to fast in a row.

Hi Dominic,
I think this issue should be reopened cause it constantly happens with my foreman setup (v1.2).
It looks like it is somehow related to the process state of foreman and responsiveness of VMware (as stated before).

Observations:
1st: the exception is triggered by the method call get_raw_cluster(attributes[:cluster], attributes[:datacenter]).resourcePool in fog/vsphere/requests/compute/create_vm.rb (line 20). It looks like the datacenter attribute is empty. This causes getCluster to return nil and there we are.

Whereas when I hit submit a second time on the submit button in foreman the creation of the host is successfully done.

2nd: It looks like this is related to foreman being run as services. When I start foreman from the shell with rails s .. no problems. As soon as I start it either as service or from mod_passenger the problem shows itself.

I have a system where I can test and reproduce this issue.
Any suggestions on how to proceed or which information would be of help for you?

Thanks Marc.

I've not really got any suggestions for how to debug this. I think it must be the cluster attribute not being found, as if the datacenter wasn't found then the get_raw_cluster method in lib/fog/vsphere/requests/compute/get_cluster.rb would fail trying to call .find_compute_resource on nil.

The original production.log from Ronny shows that the cluster is correctly passed in via params, so I can only conclude the problem is somewhere on the Fog/rbvmomi or VMware side (e.g. an unreliable query to vSphere). I can't think how Passenger versus WEBrick would affect it either.

what's the status here with newer foreman releases?