vCenter Appliance – Call “EventHistoryCollector.SetLatestPageSize” for object “SessionID” on vCenter Server failed.

When using the vSphere Client to connect to the VMware vCenter Server Appliance was appearing every now and again.

Call “EventHistoryCollector.SetLatestPageSize” for object “SessionID” on vCenter Server “ServerName” failed. (unfortunately didnt take a screenshot, so here’s one I found and modified).


This issue is pretty common, and is to do with the amount of events in the database not being purged, and is covered by VMware in this KB article for windows environments.
However not so commonly covered for the vCenter Appliance which uses a progress database.

After a bit of digging around, I found the following crude solution on the VMware communities board.

So open up a console to your VCSA, login in. Run the following commands

/opt/vmware/vpostgres/1.0/bin/psql -d VCDB vc 
TRUNCATE TABLE vpx_event CASCADE;

then to exit “/q”

Here are the steps:

1. First of all - stop VPXD
•  service vmware-vxpd stop
2. connect to DB:

   /opt/vmware/vpostgres/1.0/bin/psql -d VCDB vc 

   You will be prompted for the "vc" password which is not the same as the 

   root password.

   Password is in "/etc/vmware-vpx/embedded_db.cfg" file

   

3. issue this commands:
   
   • TRUNCATE TABLE vpx_event CASCADE;
   • TRUNCATE TABLE vpx_event_arg CASCADE;
   • TRUNCATE TABLE vpx_task CASCADE;
4. quit DB command line
• issue the command "/q "
5. start the VPXD
•  service vmware-vxpd start or restart vCSA appliance
6. Check the size of VCBD.  Now the size is only 165MB
• VCDB=> SELECT pg_database.datname, pg_size_pretty(pg_database_size(pg_database.datname)) AS size FROM pg_database;
•   datname  |  size
1. -----------+---------
    template1 | 5289 kB
    template0 | 5281 kB
    postgres  | 5385 kB
    VCDB      | 165 MB
   (4 rows)
   
   
    

References:
https://communities.vmware.com/thread/80738

http://www.educationalcentre.co.uk/vmware-5-1-vcenter-appliance-call-eventhistorycollector-setlatestpagesize-for-object-sessionid-on-vcenter-server-failed/#more-418

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2054085

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2056968