Unable to Assign License to vCenter – "Licenses could not be assigned" due to vAPI Endpoint Service Down

Products

• VCF Operations

Issue/Introduction

• Users are unable to assign a license to vCenter and encounter the following error:
  "Licenses could not be assigned to the selected vCenter systems."
• In /storage/log/vcops/log/adapters/ManagementAdapter.log, the following error is recorded:
  ERROR ManagementAdapter [vcf-licensing] - Login failed to VC at [IP_ADDRESS] com.vmware.vapi.client.exception.HttpProtocolException: HTTP response with status code 503 (enable debug logging for details): no healthy upstream
  
• In VCF Operations > Administration > Control Panel > Collection Status, the "Show issues only" widget for the Target VCF Operations Collector > vCenter reports specific errors:
  "Status Message: vstats collection failed" and "Failed to connect to the tagging service"

Environment

VCF Operations 9.0

Cause

The issue occurs when the vAPI Endpoint service on the vCenter Server is stopped or not running. This prevents the communication required for license assignment, resulting in HTTP 503 errors ("no healthy upstream"), indicating that the backend service required to process the request is unavailable

Resolution

1. Establish an SSH session to the vCenter Server as the root user
2. Check the status of the vAPI Endpoint service by running the following command:
   service-control --status vapi-endpoint
3. If the service is stopped, start it using:
   service-control --start vapi-endpoint
4. Once the service is running, retry the license assignment

Additional Information

• Ensuring all required vCenter services are running is critical for successful licensing operations.
• HTTP 503 "no healthy upstream" typically indicates that the backend service required to process the request is unavailable.
• For instructions on managing vCenter services, see: Stopping, Starting or Restarting VMware vCenter Server Appliance services