Enterprise Hybrid Cloud: How to fix or prevent issues that can lead to the VMware vAPI Endpoint service to crash by increasing vAPI Heap Memory

The vAPI Endpoint service (vmware-vapi-endpoint) exhibits one or more of the following symptoms: CrashesHealth changes to "Yellow" or "Red" Java dumps (*.hprof) files are written: /var/log/vmware/vapi/endpoint/java_pidXXXX.hprof The /var/log/vmware/vapi/endpoint/endpoint.log reports messages with "OutOfMemoryError" for example: Caused by: java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: GC overhead limit exceeded

The VMware vAPI Endpoint service (vmware-vapi-endpoint) has a default value of around 256 MB of heap memory. This service can be exhausted by environments that heavily use the VMware vCenter Server API.

To resolve this, increase the amount of heap memory that is allocated to the vAPI Endpoint service.

1. Ensure the vCenter Server Appliance is backed up before making any changes.

2. Connect to the vCenter Server Appliance on the command line (SSH or console).

3. Check the current heap memory allocated to vAPI Endpoint (vmware-vapi-endpoint) with the following command:

   cloudvm-ram-size -l | grep vmware-vapi-endpoint

4. If this value is at or close to a value of 256, double it to 512 with the following command:

   cloudvm-ram-size -C 512 vmware-vapi-endpoint

5. Stop and start the vAPI Endpoint service for the change to take effect:

   service-control --stop vmware-vapi-endpoint
   service-control --start vmware-vapi-endpoint

For most environments with vAPI Endpoint "OutOfMemory" errors, doubling the initial configuration provides enough heap memory to prevent recurrence of the issue.