For troubleshooting purposes, it may be necessary to verify the health of the vCenter Server database server. This article provides steps to eliminate the common causes for problems with a database server, including full disk space, transaction log maintenance, index fragmentation, and other common database problems.
Symptoms:
Note: The vpxd.log files are located in %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs.
VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x
Validate that each troubleshooting step below is true for your environment. The steps and sections are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and identify the proper resolution. Do not skip a step or a section.
The article is divided into several sections to allow for targeted troubleshooting depending on the symptoms. The sections are:
VMware recommends that you start with the General Troubleshooting section to verify common configuration problems which might impact the other sections of the article.
Note: If you perform a corrective action in any of these steps, restart the VMware VirtualCenter Server service to validate the change. For more information, see Stopping, starting or restarting the vCenter server service (1003895).
To validate the basic configuration of the vCenter Server database:
There are many circumstances when the vCenter Server database grows excessively. Growth of the vCenter Server database is due to data being collected and stored in the database. This data falls into three categories:
Performance data, in most cases, causes the most growth of the database. When troubleshooting excessive growth of the database, start by examining where the growth is occurring. You can use this to determine how to troubleshoot the issue.
It may be necessary to truncate the information in the database. However, this should never be the first step. Diagnose the issue completely, first, if at all possible. In many cases, the amount of data is too large to process in the given amount of time. For example, if there is more data that is being collected than can be processed in the same period of time, or if it takes several months to process the data, it may be better to simply truncate the data. In these cases, it is dependent on your business requirements as well as the cause of the growth.
vCenter Server is a database application and is therefore subject to the same issues as similar applications. These are common issues that may occur:
Performance data is currently not available for this entity
To troubleshoot these issues:
A re-initialization of the vCenter Server database resets it to the default configuration, as if the vCenter Server was newly installed. Resetting the database may be required in these situations:
To reset the database configuration:
Note: This procedure modifies the database. Ensure to take a backup of the database before proceeding.
cmd
, and click OK. The Command Prompt window opens.C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\VirtualCenter\
vpxd.exe -b
Note: If you encounter this error in the vpxd.log when attempting to connect to the SQL database server:
ODBC error: (08S01) - [Microsoft][SQL Native Client]Named Pipes Provider: No process is on the other end of the pipe
And a corresponding Event ID 17187 is recorded in the Windows Event log on the SQL Server at approximately the same time, the Event Log code indicates:
SQL Server is not ready to accept new client connections; the connection has been closed
This suggests a possible delay is necessary between the time when the SQL service starts and when the attempt is made to start the VirtualCenter Server services.
Before performing additional troubleshooting, restart the SQL Server service, wait approximately 60 seconds, then start the VirtualCenter Server service. If it starts successfully, start the VMware Management Webservices service. For more information on preventing a race condition between the VirtualCenter Server service and the SQL database service, see VMware VirtualCenter Server service does not start automatically after reboot (1007669).