vCenter's core service: if it stops you lose management, yet hosts and VMs carry on running. Its output goes to vpxd.log, with the logging level controlled from vCenter's general settings.
Also called vCenter service.
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Terms in this definition
- vCenter
Management software for VMs, clusters and ESX hosts. Each domain in VCF gets a dedicated one.
- Virtual machines
Infrastructure-as-a-service compute giving complete control of the operating system, making it a fit for lift-and-shift moves and for software relying on OS-level pieces like COM.
- vpxd log
Found at /var/log/vmware/vpxd/vpxd.log, this file tracks what the vCenter service does, including changes in host state. Its counterpart on each host is vpxa.log.
Related terms
- Content Library Service
The vCenter service that powers content libraries and exposes advanced options such as auto-sync and concurrent transfers. It shares a Tomcat server with the Transfer Service and OVF Service, so restarting one restarts all three.
- SPS
A vCenter service, vmware-sps, that handles profile-driven storage. In 9.0 a known issue causes OutOfMemoryError core dumps if the SMS or TRUSTED_ROOT stores contain large numbers of certificates; restarting the service resolves it.
- STS
Inside vCenter SSO, this service signs SAML tokens with its own certificate and gives them to users and solution users once authenticated, so a single login covers every vCenter service.
- WCP
vCenter service that drives vSphere Supervisor. Following a change to the NSX Manager certificate, thumbprint or IP address, restart it using vmon-cli --restart wcp to stop NCP entering CrashLoopBackOff.