Host will not go into maintenance mode

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Host fails to enter maintenance mode at 2%
  
  
• We see the error: 

  Failed to enter namespaces maintenance mode due to Error: system_error Messages: vapi.send.failed<Send of frame failed: N7Vmacore15SystemExceptionE(Connection refused: The remote service is not running, OR is overloaded, OR a firewall is rejecting connections.) [context]zKq7AVECAQAAAI48ewENdnB4ZAAAQxxTbGlidm1hY29yZS5zbwAACBhCACk/QwCWmUoAKHI4AJmSOABtozgAB7I4AATsNwAXRTgAxQ9RAbCOAGxpYnB0aHJlYWQuc28uMAAC3/oPbGliYy5zby42AA==[/context]> . Retry 1

• On the vCenter when running the command:

  service-control --status --all

  We see that the service "wcp" is not running 
  
  
• When looking at the log var/log/vmware/wcp/stdstream.log.stderr : 
  

  Starting service process with pid: 23949.
  time="2025-09-26T13:54:19-05:00" level=warning msg="Error opening file /var/log/vmware/certmgr.log: open /var/log/vmware/certmgr.log: permission denied, logging to stderr instead"
  time="2025-09-26T13:54:28-05:00" level=info msg="registering actuator TKG Content Library Creation"
  time="2025-09-26T13:54:28-05:00" level=info msg="registering actuator Entity Permissions"
  time="2025-09-26T13:54:29-05:00" level=info msg="registering actuator CPVM Creation"
  panic: Invalid config file /etc/vmware/wcp/wcpsvc.yaml: yaml: unmarshal errors:
    line 19: cannot unmarshal !!map into int
  
  goroutine 1 gp=0xc0000061c0 m=9 mp=0xc000588008 [running]:
  panic({0x4e7ee80?, 0xc00021e660?})

 

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x

Cause

This issue is caused because wcp service is not running causing the hosts to not enter Maintenance mode. 

Resolution

wcp service is not entering maintenance mode because of the issue described in Article 326225