vCenter Server services failed to start - Temporary failure in name resolution

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Accessing vCenter server using web client fails with Error- 503 Service Unavailable
• vCenter Server is registered with an External Platform Services Controller
• Starting services using service-control --start --all fails with vmware-cm service
• In /var/log/vmware/cm/cm.log file, you see entries similar to:

2018-07-19T09:36:19.977Z [main [] WARN  com.vmware.cis.services.cm.service.SecurityAgent ()] Failed to connect to SSO service; e: com.vmware.vim.vmomi.client.exception.ConnectionException: java.net.UnknownHostException: pscserver.domain.local: Temporary failure in name resolution, attempt xxx of 60, retry in 5s, left:3s
2018-07-19T09:36:24.981Z [main [] INFO  com.vmware.cis.services.cm.service.util.LsUtils ()] LS URI is https://pscserver.domain.local/lookupservice/sdk
2018-07-19T09:36:24.984Z [main [] INFO  com.vmware.cis.services.cm.service.util.LsUtils ()] LS URI is https://pscserver.domain.local/lookupservice/sdk
2018-07-19T09:36:24.985Z [main [] INFO  com.vmware.vim.lookup.client.SiteAffinityServerEndpointProvider ()] Site affinity is disabled
2018-07-19T09:36:24.987Z [main [] INFO  com.vmware.vim.lookup.client.SiteAffinityServerEndpointProvider ()] Site affinity is disabled
2018-07-19T09:36:24.987Z [main [] WARN  com.vmware.cis.services.cm.service.util.LsUtils ()] Call to lookup service failed; uri:https://pscserver.domain.local/lookupservice/sdk [com.vmware.vim.vmomi.client.exception.ConnectionException: java.net.UnknownHostException: pscserver.domain.local]
2018-07-19T09:36:24.987Z [main [] WARN  com.vmware.vim.vmomi.client.http.impl.HttpConfigurationCompilerBase$ConnectionMonitorThreadBase ()] Shutting down the connection monitor.
2018-07-19T09:36:24.988Z [VLSI-client-connection-monitor-17 [] WARN  com.vmware.vim.vmomi.client.http.impl.HttpConfigurationCompilerBase$ConnectionMonitorThreadBase ()] Interrupted, no more connection pool cleanups will be performed.
2018-07-19T09:36:24.989Z [main [] ERROR com.vmware.cis.services.cm.service.Main ()] start: Component Manager failed to start

• Ping to Platform Service Controller using FQDN from vCenter Server fails with Request timed out, however ping to Platform Service Controller IP address gets a response

Cause

This issue may occur if vCenter Server is registered with external Platform Services Controller using FQDN and vCenter Server is not able to resolve Platform Services Controller FQDN correctly.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, fix any underlying problems with Name resolution and ensure that vCenter Server is able to access Platform Services Controller using FQDN.

Workaround:
To work around this issue, you may edit /etc/hosts or \Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts file on vCenter Server to add Platform Services Controller IP address and FQDN for temporary name resolution