Workspace ONE Broker Service fails to start after vCenter 9 precheck

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

After running the vCenter 9 RDU upgrade precheck and not moving forward with the upgrade for any reason when rebooting the vCenter 8 appliance, the Workspace ONE broker service will fail to start. 

Validation within vCenter - /var/log/vmware/vmon/vmon.log will show the following errors:

level=error msg="runc run failed: unable to start container process: error during container init: error setting cgroup config for procHooks process: bpf_prog_query(BPF_CGROUP_DEVICE) failed: invalid argument" <vc-ws1a-broker> Service pre-start command failed with exit code 1.

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server 8.x
• VMware vCenter Server 9.x

Cause

The 9.1 precheck script modifies the vCenter 8 container cgroup configuration in the /boot/systemd.cfg file, enabling a unified cgroup hierarchy that is incompatible with the vCenter 8.x container runtime.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, revert the cgroup configuration to legacy mode:

1. Take a snapshot of the vCenter Server prior to making any changes.
   
   
2. Log in to the vCenter Server Appliance via SSH as the root user.
   
   
3. Edit the /boot/systemd.cfg file.
   
   
4. Change the value systemd.unified_cgroup_hierarchy=yes to systemd.legacy_systemd_cgroup_controller=yes.
   
   
5. Save the file and perform a full reboot of the vCenter appliance.
   
   
6. Verify that all services, including vc-ws1a-broker, are running using the command: service-control --status --all.