vCenter backups are failing after upgrading the vCenter to 8.0.3 U3g

Products

• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

• Following an upgrade of vCenter to 8.0.3, the following services are not running:
  vstats(VMware vStats Service)
  vtsdb (VMware vTsdb Service)
• vCenter VAMI backups will also fail to run due to the stopped service state.
• Below are the entries you see in /var/log/vmware/vstats/vstats-stdout.log:
  
  <timestamp>  PANIC   vcrecoverable/vcrecoverable.go:126      Error while getting providers.  {"vStats": "MVP", "PANIC": "Error while getting providers."}
vstats/util/vcrecoverable.handlePanic
        bora/vpx/vstats/vstats-svc/src/vstats/util/vcrecoverable/vcrecoverable.go:126
runtime.gopanic

• Below are the entries you see in /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log:
  
  ####-##-## ##:##:##.### UTC 68c####f8.cd5 0 FATAL: could not open log file "/var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log": Permission denied 
####-##-## ##:##:##.### UTC 68c####f8.cd5 0 LOG: database system is shut down Starting service process with pid: 98435. 
####-##-## ##:##:##.### UTC 68######e7.18083 0 FATAL: could not open log file "/var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log": Permission denied 
####-##-## ##:##:##.### UTC 68######7.18083 0 LOG: database system is shut down Starting service process with pid: 3829351.
####-##-## ##:##:##.### UTC 68######7.3a6e67 0 FATAL: could not open log file "/var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log": Permission denied

 

• Restarting the vStats and vtsdb services results in the following error 
  
  

  root@vCenter [ ~ ]# service-control --restart vtsdb
Service-control failed. Error: Failed to restart service vtsdb. vmon-cli RC=2, stderr=Restart service request failed. Error: Service crashed while starting

  root@vCenter [ ~ ]# service-control --restart vstats
Service-control failed. Error: Failed to restart service vstats. vmon-cli RC=2, stderr=Restart service request failed. Error: Service crashed while starting

  
  
  

•  /storage/vtsdb/ and /var/log/vmware/vtsdb in the vCenter log, you see permissions similar to 
  
  
  
  
  
  
   
  
  

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server 8.0.3

Cause

• After upgrading to vCenter 8.0.3, the vtsdb (PostgreSQL) process that backs vstats can’t start because it doesn’t have permission to write to its log file
• During the upgrade, the ownership/permissions on /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/ got reset or corrupted

Resolution

1. SSH into the vCenter as root

2. Change the permissions from root:root to vtsdbuser:root at  /storage/vtsdb  and  root:root to vtsdbuser:users  at /var/log/vmware/vtsdb using 'chown'

   chown vtsdbuser:root /storage/vtsdb/vtsdbdata/

   chown vtsdbuser:users /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log
   chown vtsdbuser:users /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/postgresql.log-2025-10-02_12\:28\:24.gz
   chown vtsdbuser:users /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/vtsdb-runtime.log.stderr
   chown vtsdbuser:users /var/log/vmware/vtsdb/vtsdb-runtime.log.stdout
   

3. Validate the permissions now
   
   

   The sample outputs look similar to: 

   root@vCenter [ /storage/vtsdb ]# ls -ltrah /storage/vtsdb
total 20
drwx------  2 root      root 16384 Jun 19  2024 lost+found
drwx------ 18 vtsdbuser root  4096 Oct  9 00:00 vtsdbdata

    

   root@vCenter [ /var/log/vmware/vtsdb ]# ls -ltrah /var/log/vmware/vtsdb
total 3884
-rw------- 1 vtsdbuser users 3946375 Oct  9 16:25 postgresql.log
-rw------- 1 vtsdbuser users   14560 Jun 20  2024 postgresql.log-2025-10-02_12:28:24.gz
-rw------- 1 vtsdbuser users    1592 Oct  3 18:29 vtsdb-runtime.log.stderr
-rw------- 1 vtsdbuser users     248 Oct  3 18:29 vtsdb-runtime.log.stdout

4. Restart the vtsdb and vstats services 
   
   

   root@vCenter [ ~ ]# service-control --restart vtsdb
   root@vCenter [ ~ ]# service-control --restart vstats

5. The services should start , and the backups should run successfully.