Performance charts stuck on loading or Retrieving chart data for Clusters, Resource Pools, or vApps

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

In the vSphere Client, the Performance tab might not display the overview and advanced performance charts related to clusters and resource pools. Instead, you may see an error message similar to:

General Report General Exception

When there are a large number of ESX hosts and virtual machines in a cluster or resource pool or vApp, the vCenter Server takes a long time to calculate the statistic data for a cluster or resource pool before providing such data for the overview performance charts to plot.

By default, the timeout value for the vc.webservice.timeout parameter is set to 1 minute in the vCenter Server system. If the vCenter Server takes more than 1 minute to calculate the statistics data for a cluster or resource pool, the overview performance charts are not displayed. In this case, you need to increase the vc.webservice.timeout parameter value on the basis of the size of the cluster or resource pool.

This issues occurs because the performance charts collect statistical data from the vCenter Server database or the vCenter Performance Manager. The virtual Center Performance Manager statistics for clusters, resource pools, and vApps are calculated on-the-fly (from the hosts) and do not have statistics saved in the database. In large environments the data is not retrieved within a given time frame so the vSphere Client times out.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x

Resolution

To work around the issue, increase the timeout value of the vc.webservice.timeout parameter and restart the VMware VirtualCenter Management Web service service on the vCenter Server system:

1. On the vCenter Server system, open the web.xml located at C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\webapps\statsreport\WEB-INF using a text editor.
2. Based on the size of the cluster or resource pool, increase the value of the vc.webservice.timeout parameter:
   
   <context-param>
   <description>VC Web Service connection timeout in minutes</description>
   <param-name>vc.webservice.timeout</param-name>
   <param-value>n</param-value>
   </context-param>
   
   where n is the new parameter value for the vc.webservice.timeout parameter in minutes.
   
   
3. Save and close the file.
4. Restart the VMware VirtualCenter Management Web service service.