VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized platform for managing your VMware vSphere environments so you can automate and deliver a virtual infrastructure with confidence. What’s new in vCenter Server 6.0 and what’s new in vCenter appliance 6.0 will help you understand all latest features of Virtual Center server. This article will help you to understand various troubleshooting steps to troubleshoot windows based vCenter Service. There is also an other version of Virtual Center . It is important to understand the difference between virtual center based on windows and vCenter appliance.
Error 1067 unable to start the VMware vCenter Service
I got a call from the monitoring tools team that our vCenter server is not working. As usual, I thought to start the stopped vCenter service. I noticed service was not started and i tried to start the service and it was throwing the below error:
“Windows Could not start the VMware vCenter service on local computer. Error 1067: the process terminated unexpectedly”
Troubleshooting vCenter Service Step 1:
My first place to troubleshoot the vCenter service failure is “vpxd.log” on the below location
Windows 2003 – C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs
Windows 2008 – C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs”
In VPXD logs, i found the below error
[2012-06-05 03:57:53.047 08104 error ‘App’] Failed reading C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\vpxd.cfg. Line 33. class Vmacore::Xml::XMLParseException(mismatched tag)
[ 2012-06-05 03:57:53.047 08104 error ‘App’] [VpxdMain] Failed to init vmacore
From the above Log, I noticed the line telling me something about the cause for this issue.
Failed reading C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\vpxd.cfg. Line 33. class Vmacore::Xml::XMLParseException(mismatched tag)
There is a tag mismatched on the “vpxd.cfg” file. which is not allowing to start virtual center service.
Troubleshooting vCenter Service Step 2:
I have started my investigation into my virtual center server configuration file “Vpxd.cfg” and the error messge telling me that Line 33 is culprit so, I started targetting my line towards 30 to 35 in “vpxd.cfg” file.
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First, it looks like the culprit is the below line.
Tried to start the service but no luck again failed and the error message in the vpxd log is different this time
“the Duplicate loop error”
Troubleshooting vCenter Service Step 3:
Again my target is vCenter Service configuration file “Vpxd.cfg”
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This time found the issue and the issue is because of the loop # and # appears twice in the configuration file. Removed the extra loop and started the service. It started successfully.
The issue appeared because of the configuration file of vCenter service was edited as part of standard hardening but edited with the wrong format sometime before and my server was rebooted as part of patching process.Configuration changes takes effect if you restart the Virtual center service. After the reboot, Service was started.
I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for reading!!!. Be social and share it in social media like Google +, Facebook and twitter, if worth sharing it.