Alerts are displayed in vCenter service status after upgrading to vCenter Server 5.x

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

After upgrading vCenter Server to 5.0 update 1 without issues, you experience these issues:

On reboot the vCenter service status displays these alerts:
- Threshold Usage Tracking Service - Cannot obtain user-defined license thresholds
- Asset Properties History Service - Cannot store hosts' MAC addresses in the vCenter Server Database
- Assignments Feeding Service - Cannot obtain license assignments for VRAM usage
- License Usage History Service - Cannot store license usage in the vCenter Server database
You may also see this error:

VMware vCenter Storage Monitoring Service - Service initialization failed

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the Tomcat service does not have sufficient permissions to access the SQL database.

If the VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices is running under a Windows Active Directory account instead of Local System, the service is set to Local System during the upgrade process. This causes the VMware VirtualCenter Server and VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices services to be no longer running under the same domain account.

The VMware VirtualCenter Server service continues to run under the domain account and the VirtualCenter Management Webservices service runs as Local System.

Resolution

This issue is resolved in vCenter Server 5.0 Update 3. For more information, see VMware vCenter Server 5.0 Update 3 Release Notes. You can download the latest release, available at VMware Downloads.

When using Windows authentication for the ODBC connection, ensure that the domain account that is used to log in has administrative privileges on the vCenter Server database. Also, ensure that the VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices service is running with the same domain account that the VMware VirtualCenter Server service is running.

Alternatively, you can also create a new domain service account and assign it dbowner permissions for the vCenter Server database, then use this account to access the vCenter Server database.

To resolve this issue by creating a new domain service account:

Create a new domain service account and assign it dbowner permissions to access the vCenter Server database.
Open the properties for the VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices service.
Change the Log On option from Local System to the vCenter Server dbowner service account that you created.
Restart the vCenter Server and VirtualCenter Management Webservices and the vSphere Client, ensuring that the AD account is used to start the services. For more information, see Stopping, starting, or restarting vCenter services (1003895) and Restarting the Management agents on an ESXi or ESX host (1003490).

Additional Information

For related information, see:

Restarting the Management agents in ESXi
How to stop, start, or restart vCenter Server services
vCenter Service Status reports the error: service initialization failed
vSphere Client Overview Performance Charts fail with the error: Perf Charts service experienced an internal error
vCenter Server 5.x へのアップグレード後にアラートが [vCenter サービスステータス] に表示される
升级到 vCenter Server 5.x 后，vCenter Service Status 中显示警示