VMware Cloud Director not starting due to Postgres Start Error - could not access private key file "/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.key": No such file or directory

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

When Starting Cloud Director Service it seems to stall. Finding the following log entries:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/logs/vcloud-container-debug.log

2025-06-11 12:52:26,105 | ERROR    | Module: com.vmware.vcloud-common-cell-impl | JDBCExceptionReporter          | ERROR: canceling statement due to lock timeout
  Where: while updating tuple (6,11) in relation "cells" |

Postgres service failing to start with the following Errors 

/var/log/nginx/error.log

2025/06/11 12:00:27 [notice] 1004#0: worker process 1005 exited with code 0
2025/06/11 12:00:27 [notice] 1004#0: exit
2025/06/11 12:25:39 [emerg] 919#0: cannot load certificate key "/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.key": BIO_new_file() failed (SSL: error:80000002:system library::No such file or directory:calling fopen(/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.key, r) error:10000080:BIO routines::no such file)
2025/06/11 13:02:57 [notice] 1005#0: using the "epoll" event method
2025/06/11 13:02:57 [notice] 1005#0: nginx/1.25.2
2025/06/11 13:02:57 [notice] 1005#0: built by gcc 10.5.0 (GCC)
2025/06/11 13:02:57 [notice] 1005#0: OS: Linux 5.10.216-2.ph4
2025/06/11 13:02:57 [notice] 1005#0: getrlimit(RLIMIT_NOFILE): 1024:524288
2025/06/11 13:02:57 [notice] 1008#0: start worker processes
2025/06/11 13:02:57 [notice] 1008#0: start worker process 1009

/var/log/messages

2025-06-11T12:25:39.901202-04:00 [cell name] postgres[1026]: 2025-06-11 16:25:39.900 UTC [1026] FATAL:  could not access private key file "/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.key": No such file or directory

/var/vmware/vpostgres/current/pgdata/log/postgresql-[day].log

2025-06-11 15:59:43.286 UTC [1028] LOG:  could not access private key file "/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.key": No such file or directory

Environment

Cloud Director 10.6.x

Cause

Critical file is missing:

/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/vcd_ova.key

Resolution

Locate key file in the following directory.

/opt/vmware/appliance/etc/ssl/

The key file may be improperly named:

[cell name].key

Once located, create a copy with the correct name:

1. Copy file:

cp [cell name].key vcd_ova.key

2. Update owner

chown root:users vcd_ova.key

3. Update Permissions

chmod 640 vcd_ova.key

After the file is updated and the permissions are updated restart the postgres service:

service vpostgres restart

Once the DB is back and working the Cloud Director Service will also start successfully.

Additional Information

If the cloud director service does not restart automatically, run the following command:

service vmware-vcd restart