Disabling VCHA causing vCenter services to be in stopped status

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vCenter Server 7.0
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

Upon disabling VCHA (for patching vCenter, for example), vCenter services stops and fails to start with the message "Successfully started profile: HAcore"

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x

Cause

Since the VCHA is broken, the default start profile left for vMon is HAcore and hence it is starting only services related to HAcore profile.

Resolution

Please find the steps below to update the defaultStartProfile

1. Check file
   # cat /storage/vmware-vmon/defaultStartProfile
   
   
2. Output of the file will be similar to
   # cat /storage/vmware-vmon/defaultStartProfile
HACore
   
   
3. Replace HAcore with ALL, using vi editor. The output should be:
   # cat /storage/vmware-vmon/defaultStartProfile
ALL
   
   
4. Restart vCenter services.
   # service-control --stop --all && service-control --start --all

Additional Information

If the VCHA status is disrupted due to an abrupt ESXi host failure and VCHA reports an invalid configuration state, perform the following workaround steps:

1. Remove the VCHA configuration by following the steps provided in the referenced KB article: How to Remove a vCenter High Availability (VCHA) Configuration Using the command line Interface (CLI)
2. Validate whether the HAcore status is reflecting 'ALL' using the below command.
   # cat /storage/vmware-vmon/defaultStartProfile
3. Restart the vCenter services.
   # service-control --stop --all && service-control --start --all

For more information, please see: Patching a vCenter High Availability Environment