vCenter Events tab not getting updated with recent events.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• vCenter Events tab at vCenter, ESXi, Datacenter layer does not get updated with recent events, unless we apply the Date and Time filter on events.
• The list keeps showing the old event in normal view, if checked without the Date filter.

Environment

vCenter Server 8.x

 

Cause

• If a VPX_EVENT_SEQ reset was executed on vCenter without a corresponding DB purge will lead to such issues.
  • VPX_EVENT_SEQ reset is done using the below command, which should be avoided:
    • /opt/vmware/vpostgres/current/bin/psql -U postgres VCDB -c "ALTER SEQUENCE VPX_EVENT_SEQ RESTART WITH 1"
• Additionally, if any node(ESXi/VM) in the vCenter starts sending older events to VC than the current date, we could see discrepancy in the Events UI tab.
  • This could happen if there is an ongoing issue on the ESXi/VM node.
  • In vpxd logs, we will see the older events as below(Below is an example snippet, date is used for reference to show the discrepancy):
    • Jun 08 07:53:59 <VC_FQDN> vpxd[7333]: Event [11661599] [1-1] [2026-02-07T03:44:21.240107+01:00] [vim.event.EventEx] [info] [11661599] [vSphere HA agent on host <host_name> connected to the vSphere HA master on host <host_name> in cluster <cluster_name> in datacenter <datacenter_name>]

Resolution

• Navigate to vCenter Server -> Settings -> General -> Database -> Event Retention.
  
  
• Temporarily set retention to 2 or 3 days (this forces a purge of the legacy events).
  
  
• Allow the background purge job to complete overnight automatically.
  
  
• Verify the UI displays recent events without the date filter, then restore the original retention policy.

Additional Information

Related issues:

• Default date filter on the vCenter Events page of the vSphere Client is fixed to a specific date.
• Delete old tasks, events and statistics data in vCenter Server 7.x and 8.x