vCenter Heartbeat Warnings

[blomoff]

Hi,

Seem to be getting a load of warnings regarding heartbeat lately...i'm told lately, haven't really been that involved with it so it could have been going on a lot longer. The warning is as follows:

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat Yellow Alert: Application Warning. This happened at DATE on the SECONDARY SERVER Passive. Further information if available: Service 'SCHEDULE' failed its check

Anyone got any ideas, or ideas where i should start looking? Never really dealt with heartbeat before so this is a new one to me

[blomoff]

Looking at the eventlogs on the server seem to indicate other similar warnings related to service failures. Notably VPXD and MSSQL services on the secondary server.

I've checked the services and the startup type is set to manual, not sure if this is how they are meant to be, i assume so, but is that part of the issue?

Head scratching at moment

[erikverbruggen]

The services on the secondary vCenter Server should be set to manual startup. vCenter Server Heartbeat will start these services when the primary vCenter Server has failed.

If you are getting service failures it could be possible that vCenter Heartbeat tried to start the vCenter Server services because of a failure on the primary vCenter Server. Does the logging show anything about vCenter Server Heartbeat trying to start the services? And what does the logging show on the primary vCenter Server at the same time?

[blomoff]

Which logs should i be looking at?

[erikverbruggen]

The vCenter Server Heartbeat service should log directly in the eventlog, either system or application. Otherwise you can also view the log from the vCenter Heartbeat GUI

[blomoff]

Yeah that's were I found a load of entries regarding service failures etc on the secondary server.

Will check the primary shortly and se what they say

[blomoff]

Primary has a few warnings related to timeouts trying to start services, but mostly from nearly a month ago, none since. For example:

This happened at Sat Mar 11 21:05:57 CST 2017 on the PRIMARY SERVER while Active (applications unmonitored). Further information if available: Trying to start service VPXD [try 1]: Time out has expired and the operation has not been completed. (Timeout). 615 seconds left.

The errors on the secondary are all recent as displayed in the intial opening post

[erikverbruggen]

The warnings related to timeouts trying to start the services is fairly normal. It takes some time to start the vCenter services and this will trigger this warning. You can safely ignore those if the services start successfully.

The vCenter Heartbeat Administration Guide has a section how to collect diagnostic logging. Maybe these will provide you with some more information.

[blomoff]

What about the first 'warning' regarding service failed its check? Any ideas?

[erikverbruggen]

vCenter Heartbeat checks the protected services if they are still available. The service 'SCHEDULE' is the Task Scheduler service and as i remember correctly should not be running on the passive server. It looks like the warning has something to do with this service. Maybe the event log has some entries for it? Or you could try the diagnostic log to find the root cause.

[blomoff]

Service is set to manual on the passive server. I wonder if that's why its timing out trying to start it itself.

I've exported the diagnostic logs, but they seem more geared for VMware support to view, doesn't seem to be anything I can find in them that indicates an issue with a log viewer. Any ideas which one I specifically should be looking at?