You can collect installation log files and check these files to identify the source of a failure if vCenter Server Appliance stops responding during initial startup.

Procedure

  1. Access the appliance shell.
    Option Description
    If you have direct access to the appliance Press Alt+F1.
    To connect remotely Use SSH or another remote console connection to start a session to the appliance.
  2. Enter a user name and password that the appliance recognizes.
  3. In the appliance shell , run the pi shell command to access the Bash shell.
  4. In the Bash shell, run the vc-support.sh script to generate a support bundle.
    This command generates a .tgz file in /var/tmp.
  5. Export the generated support bundle to the [email protected]:/tmp folder. 
    scp /var/tmp/vc-etco-vm-vlan11-dhcp-63-151.eng.vmware.com-2014-02-28--21.11.tgz [email protected]:/tmp
  6. Determine which firstboot script failed. 
    cat /var/log/firstboot/firstbootStatus.json

What to do next

To identify potential causes of the failure, examine the log file of the firstboot script that failed.