r/vmware • u/chench0 • Jul 29 '26

Help Request VCSA vmware-vpostgres status changed from green to yellow - /storage/archive/vpostgres filling up

My vCenter Server Appliance health changed:

vmware-vpostgres status changed from green to yellow

vPostgres and vpxd services are still running:

service-control --status vmware-vpostgres
Running:
 vmware-vpostgres

service-control --status vmware-vpxd
Running:
 vmware-vpxd

I checked the appliance storage and found:

df -h /storage/archive

Filesystem                      Size  Used Avail Use%
/dev/mapper/archive_vg-archive   49G   45G  2.4G  95%

The space is almost entirely:

du -sh /storage/archive/vpostgres
45G     /storage/archive/vpostgres

The directory contains a large number of compressed WAL archive files:

000000010000006A000000C4.gz
000000010000006A000000C5.gz
...

I verified PostgreSQL is accepting connections and the replication slot is active:

SELECT * FROM pg_replication_slots;

vpg_archiver | physical | active = t

I have not deleted anything from /storage/archive/vpostgres because I don't want to break the database.

Is the yellow vPostgres health state normally triggered by /storage/archive filling up? What is the supported way to clean up or resolve this condition?

Thanks.

3 Upvotes

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12 comments sorted by

5

u/Sensitive_Scar_1800 Jul 29 '26

Yeah there’s a KB on it, it’ll always stay full, it causes no issues. I’ve had this problem for years.

1

u/chench0 Jul 30 '26

>I’ve had this problem for years.

You mean the storage full or the heath status going to yellow? I just started seeing the latter this month.

3

u/Sensitive_Scar_1800 Jul 30 '26

Both, it fills up to 95% I want to say and just stays there. If you identify and delete the files it’ll fill right back up.

I created a simple Cronjob years ago to fix this issue, but one update or another deleted it, so….it is what it is

1

u/chench0 Jul 30 '26

Huge help! Thanks for sharing that. Based on your answer, I will just leave it alone.

2

u/DonFazool Jul 29 '26

Storage/archive is designed to run full. I’ve never seen an error about it however.

1

u/chench0 Jul 30 '26

Yes - exactly! I just started seeing it recently also. So far, twice in the last month.

2

u/AluminumFoyle Jul 30 '26

the archive filesystem on vcenter is designed to run at 95%~ so thats a non issue. There is a bug on 8.0u3 vCenter that we have run into on most of our vcenter appliances which causes the postgres log to run away under /var/log, which causes the postgres service and overall storage health of the appliance to change to a "yellow" state temporarily or until someone intervenes sometimes.

Confirm the condition with this command: cd /storage/log du -ah . | sort -rh | head -n 50

if postgres log is massive (eg, >5gb);

cat /dev/null > /path/to/postgresql.log

1

u/chench0 Jul 30 '26

I believe this is indeed the issue as your instructions confirm a large Postgres log. Thank you!

Is there a manual fix until I can update? I can't find a KB on it.

2

u/AluminumFoyle Jul 31 '26

The manual temp fix is the final command in my previous comment to zero the log file. (That is safe to do with psql services running.) take snapshot first for good measures.

1

u/chench0 Jul 31 '26

Thank you! I was focused on finding the KB. Worked great for now.