STS Health status report RED without any service state change

Products

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

Issue/Introduction

We receive an alarm in the vCenter:

Alarm 'Health status changed alarm' on Datacenters triggered by event ###### 'sts status changed from green to red'

After a few seconds, we received an Alarm that the status changed to green.

Alarm 'Health status changed alarm' on Datacenters triggered by event ###### 'sts status changed from red to green'

Upon checking the vCenter service, we don't see the STS service in the stopped state. The service is running without any issues.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0

VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Cause

• In the /var/log/vmware/vmdir/vmafdvmdirclient.log we can see that a password reset happened for the machine account for the vCenter ([email protected]).
• At the same time, if the vMON is polling the service health state for the service(in this case STS), the older token used to log in becomes invalid.

Resolution

• There is no major action to be taken. Any admin can keep track of the Alarm and the frequency.
  If the Alarm is triggered every 5 minutes when the vmon checks the health then please validate the status of the STS service. 
  　　　service-control --status --all 
• From VAMI: https://vcIP/FQDN:5480 > services
  If the service is stopped, then these need attention from Broadcom.