You attempt to connect to the Web Console that runs as a Virtual Appliance on your ESX(i) Host. The connection will not be established or it takes several minutes in order to load the UI of the Web Console. You can reinstall the Virtual Appliance or one specific log to solve this issue.

This article applies to:

• Acronis vmProtect 7
• Acronis vmProtect 8

Symptoms

You attempt to connect to the Web Console of Acronis vmProtect Agent as Virtual Appliance on your ESX(i) Host. The connection cannot be established or it needs takes a very long to load the interface.

Cause

Acronis vmProtect 7: The most possible reason is that there is one large log (wcs.log) on the Virtual Appliance that slows down the Agent functionality.

Acronis vmProtect 8: While "large wcs.log" issue is fixed in this version there could be other files consuming the storage enormously

Solution

There are two possible solutions:

1. Delete the existing Virtual Appliance from ESX(i) or vCenter Host. Then reinstall the Virtual Appliance.
2. (Applicable to Acronis vmProtect 7 only) Or delete the wcs.log from the Virtual Appliance on the ESX(i) host. To do this, follow these steps:
   1. Connect to ESX(i) host/vCenter via vSphere Infrastructure Client and click on the installed and running Virtual Appliance;
   2. Go to Console tab (the GUI of the Virtual Appliance) and press CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-SPACE-F1 and then ALT-F2;
   3. Enter the following command in the appeared command line:

      cd /var/lib/Acronis/vmProtect (press Enter)

      rm -f wcs.log (press Enter)

   4. Press ALT-F1 to return to the GUI of the Virtual Appliance.
   5. Restart the Virtual Appliance 
3. Or check the sizes of /var/log/messages + /tmp/core files and remove them:
   
   1. Install the WinSCP utility which you can get from http://winscp.net/eng/download.php. WinSCP (Windows Secure CoPy) is a free and open source SFTP, SCP, and FTP client for Microsoft Windows. Its main function is to secure file transfer between a local and a remote computer. Beyond this, WinSCP offers basic file manager and file synchronization functionality.
   2. Log in to vSphere Client and open the console of Acronis vmProtect Virtual Appliance. Write down or remember the IP address of it.
   3. Press CTRL-SHIFT-ALT-SPACE-F1 and then ALT-F2 (this will bring you to the command line interface);
   4. In the console please type this command: /bin/sshd
   5. Launch the WinSCP utility on the machine where you installed it;
   6. In the host machine field type your Acronis vmProtect Virtual Appliance IP (recorded on Step 2), the same as in the vSphere console. The default login:password is root:root (the password may differ if you changed it via web console at Configure -> Agent Password).
   7. The protocol should be set to SCP and then click on log in.
   8. You will get a window with all the directories of the Appliance (Windows Commander-like interface), we are interested in the /tmp/core file (only if present) and /var/lib/Acronis/vmProtect/ folder. Please copy both file and the folder, pack them into .zip and contact Acronis Support with the collected information and a reference to this article. This information will be required to investigate the roots of the issue and prevent it in future.
   9. Delete the /tmp/core + /var/log/messages files via WinSCP interface
   10. Unpack the lighttpd.conf file from this package and put it into /etc/lighttpd/ folder overwriting the existing file (it might be 0 size and thus invalid) via WinSCP interface
   11. Restart the Virtual Appliance
   12. If this doesn't help then contact Acronis Support with the information collected at step 8.

More information

The large wcs.log issue is fixed in Acronis vmProtect 8 where the logs archiving is implemented thus preventing the logs from extensive growth.

The large /var/log/messages issue is pending to be addressed in the future versions of Acronis vmProtect.

See also Acronis vmProtect 8.