vapi-endpoint Service fails to start with "Response size is greater than allowed"

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This KB will help in resolving the vapi endpoint crashing.

Symptoms:
vapi-endpoint service will fail to start or crash with this error.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x

Cause

There is a filter being hit. The response is too big. This filter is there to guard against the vapi-endpoint being taken down accidentally by a very big response sent by the upstream vapi provider.

Resolution

To fix this issue please follow below steps:

1. Take Snapshot of the VCenter and offline Snapshots of the VCs if they are in linked mode.
2. Login to the VCenter via SSH with root credentials.
3. Backup the below file with command
cp /etc/vmware-vapi/endpoint.properties /etc/vmware-vapi/endpoint.properties.bak
4. Edit the file with vi editor.
vi /etc/vmware-vapi/endpoint.properties
5. Press i to enter into Insert mode.
6. Then change the below mentioned line to the required number.
Default:
http.response.maxSize=7000000


According to the above mentioned number in the error message increased to 40MB.
http.response.maxSize=40000000

7. Then press :wq! and hit Enter to save and exit.
8. Then increase the heap memory size of vapi-endpoint Service to the required size using below command.
cloudvm-ram-size.bat -C 2048 vmware-vapi-endpoint

Note: In this example, the heap memory of vapi is increased to 2GB.

9. Start the vapi-endpoint Service.



Note: For increasing the heap memory size for vapi endpoint service, below KB can be verified.
Manually increasing the heap memory of components in vCenter Server 7.x and 8.x

Additional Information

Impact/Risks:
vapi-endpoint service will crash and VCenter will be inaccessible.