vCenter vpxd crashes due to NULL value fetched from VPX_VM

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• vpxd service crashes.
• In the /var/log/vmware/vpx/vpxd.log file, you see entries similar to:
  
  2016-11-06T00:11:31.900-04:00 error vpxd[7F6FEA5487A0] [Originator@6876 sub=Main] [Init] Init failed: The data being fetched is NULL at column position 0 for "select max(IDXCOLVALS.ID) from (select ID from VPX_VM where ID >= ? order by ID asc limit 61) IDXCOLVALS"
  --> Backtrace:
  -->
  2016-11-06T00:11:31.900-04:00 warning vpxd[7F6FEA5487A0] [Originator@6876 sub=VpxProfiler] ServerApp::Init [TotalTime] took 4885 ms
  2016-11-06T00:11:31.900-04:00 error vpxd[7F6FEA5487A0] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Failed to intialize VMware VirtualCenter. Shutting down...
  2016-11-06T00:11:31.900-04:00 info vpxd[7F6FEA5487A0] [Originator@6876 sub=SupportMgr] Wrote uptime information
  2016-11-06T00:13:31.902-04:00 info vpxd[7F6FEA5487A0] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] Forcing shutdown of VMware VirtualCenter now

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs while doing VM summary load from DB, during VC installation. DB parallel load happens with available actual number of threads. The Virtual machine provisioned with 24 CPUs, makes 38.4 available actual threads for DB load. This make the range to have invalid number for select query. The value fetched from VPX_VM is NULL due to invalid range being sent in Select Query, resulting in vpxd service fails to start.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in VMware vCenter server 6.0 update 3 and later available at Broadcom Downloads.

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