December 2, 2013  

vCenter Service won’t start/Failed to create http proxy

I recently had a customer who’s vCenter service would not start on their management server.  The Event 1000 error showed: “Failed to intialize VMware VirtualCenter. Shutting down…”  Not very helpful!
Error1
Next, I checked the vpxd log files: %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\.  In there I noticed the following error: [VpxdReverseProxy] Failed to create http proxy: An attempt was made to access a socket in a way forbidden by its access permissions. This indicated that something was using one of the vCenter ports (By default 80,443,902).

Error2

The next step for this was to find out what was using one of those ports.  For that, we use the netstat command: netstat -bano > C:\netstat.txt (I will generally output this to text file as it makes it easier to search).
netstata
Search the output file for the ports VMware Ports listed above (or the non-standard ports you may have configured).
netstatb

To check what application is related to the PID, open Task Manager and add PID to the view (View, Select Columns)

TaskManagerPID
TaskManagerPID2
At this stage I had a pretty good idea what was using it.  Jumped into IIS and sure enough, somebody had started the Default Website running on Port 80. Stopped the website and restarted the vCenter Service with no further issues

IIS

services

About AJ McKean

Based in sunny Tauranga, New Zealand, AJ McKean is a Senior Systems Engineer in Mt Maunganui. With over 15 years of professional IT experience working in both New Zealand and the United States, he holds several certifications including MCSE(2000-2003), MCITP:Enterprise(2008), MCSA(2012), VMware VCP-DCV5.5, CompTIA A+ & is an HP Storage Architect. He is passionate about all things IT, especially virtualization, automation & cloud technologies.

22 Responses to “vCenter Service won’t start/Failed to create http proxy”

  1. Stanley says :

    Hello, it worked 😉 Thanks a lot.

    Reply
  2. Daniele says :

    Thank you so much, it worked!!!

    Reply
  3. Pravin Utekar says :

    Good and best solutions…

    Reply
  4. Antonio says :

    Thank you very much.

    Reply
  5. Javier says :

    Thank you very much, 🙂

    Reply
  6. Giulio says :

    I had the same issue, I think after installing Veeam One, your solution worked flawlessly! Thank you very much!

    Reply
  7. user says :

    Thanks a lot, you saved my day !
    P.S. IIS intalled by Veeam One is my problem

    Reply
  8. Keir D says :

    Thanks so much for this article AJ, it helped me resolve an issue with our business critical virtual centre server! power to you mate.

    Reply
  9. Ike says :

    Thanks. I ran into a similar issue and this helped. Cheers

    Reply
  10. yefhack says :

    its works!! THNX!!

    Reply
  11. Thierry Olmedo says :

    Thanks !! , same error , some solution ! , exelent

    Reply
  12. donpraxo says :

    Worked fine for me as well!! Thank you so much

    Reply
  13. Mister IT Man says :

    Hurrah ! Worked for me as well. Installing Veam One on the same server as Veam B&R broke my replication jobs – they were just running forever without doing anything. So I uninstalled Veam One and after that my Vcenter server would not start, but manually stopping the Default Web Site running made it work again. Thank You !!!

    Reply
  14. Jeff Gover says :

    Thanks a bundle. I am at a new site I was all around the Mulberry Bush chasing SQL issues down. I owe you a beer.
    Jeff

    Reply
  15. giuseppe says :

    thank’s bro ! you saved my life! a lot of error ,a lot of resolution , but only you find the right answer! thank you so much!

    Reply
  16. Nicolas says :

    Thanks you very much !!!!!!

    Reply
  17. Katz says :

    Thanks!

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *