vCenter is down and must be located by ESXi host for maintenance.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

It becomes difficult for an administrator to find the vCenter server VM to take a snapshot, especially when vCenter itself is inaccessible.

Finding the vCenter server virtual machine in a large environment consisting of several hosts to take a snapshot prior to troubleshooting.

Environment

vCenter server 7.0.x
vCenter server 8.0.x

 

Cause

When the vCenter server virtual machine is down/unavailable due to some underlying issues on its internal services, it helps in finding the vCenter server VM amongst all available hosts in a large environment.

Resolution

• Open SSH to the vCenter server and login using the root user 
• Connect to the VCDB (vCenter server database) using below command. 

/opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/psql -d VCDB -U postgres

 

• Search for the vCenter server vm in the table vpx_vm using its dns_name or ip_address

VCDB=# select dns_name, ip_address, host_id from vpx_vm where dns_name like '%vcenter%';

          dns_name          |  ip_address  | host_id
----------------------------+--------------+---------
 vc.example.com       | ###.###.###.###  | ###  
(1 row)

 

• To confirm, which host has the vCenter server VM running.. We corelate the above information and find the dns_name , ip_address of the respective ESXi host using its associated host_id.

VCDB=# select dns_name, ip_address from vpx_host where id = xxxx;
         dns_name         | ip_address
--------------------------+-------------
 esxi.example.com       | ###.###.###.###
(1 row)

 

• To safely exit from the VCDB, use below command. 

VCDB=# \q