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ESXi 8.x, 7.x, 6.x Service sfcbd-watchdog Not Running / Fails to Start – VirtuallyThatGuy

Posted on 9 November 201817 May 2023 by VirtuallyThatGuy

Excited about ESXi 6.7 like everyone else so I updated the lab to version 6.7 vCenter, SRM, ESXi, vROPS, vSphere replication and boom PRTG (my primary monitoring tool) wasn’t picking up any hardware monitoring. I had problem with the VMware ESXi service sfcbd-watchdog which wouldn’t start on my newly deployed ESX 6.7 servers and since the service is used for hardware monitoring purposes it is quite important. The service is disabled and is in stopped state from ESXi 6.5 so this blog post will be about my findings and how you can get the service to a running state.

This also works for esxi 8, 7 and 6.x

As you can see in the below figure the service is in Stopped state.

I googled a few times and came across the start command “/etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog start”

This didn’t work as per above. I kept on digging and came across “esxcli system wbem set --enable true” then boom it started working.​​ 

Process to fix​​ sfcbd-watchdog

  • Enable SSH and Shell

  • Login to ESXi host as root

  • Run this command “esxcli system wbem set --enable true”

  • Log back to​​ Web client​​ and start the service​​ 

12 thoughts on “ESXi 8.x, 7.x, 6.x Service sfcbd-watchdog Not Running / Fails to Start – VirtuallyThatGuy”

  1. john says:
    18 August 2021 at 09:52

    thank you so much, fixed the issues for me

    Reply
  2. Jurgen says:
    4 November 2021 at 09:07

    Thanks a bunch. resolved my issue for hardware monitoring.

    Reply
  3. Patrick Chaney says:
    27 May 2022 at 00:43

    same. much appreciated.

    Reply
  4. daham Kulatunga says:
    27 June 2022 at 14:21

    thank you very much

    Reply
  5. someITguy says:
    12 August 2022 at 18:34

    Solved it for me as well. Thank you very much!

    Reply
  6. Venioo says:
    29 September 2022 at 09:32

    It works! Thank you very much!

    Reply
  7. Barrey says:
    9 November 2022 at 17:07

    Just a note to say this worked for me on 7.0 U3 also.

    Reply
  8. Ben says:
    17 May 2023 at 18:19

    works on esxi 8 too!

    Reply
    1. Johan says:
      1 September 2023 at 09:46

      With me with 8.01 it does not work.
      I Had to enter “/etc/init.d/sfcbd-watchdog start” in /etc/rc.local.d/local.sh

      Reply
      1. VirtuallyThatGuy says:
        9 October 2023 at 15:12

        worked for me in 8.0 GA but havn’t updated lab to 8.1 yet will update and revert back

        Reply
  9. Robert says:
    11 June 2023 at 16:17

    Worked. Thank you!

    Reply
  10. Yogesh says:
    23 October 2023 at 12:33

    Hello, It’s showing running in web console but esxcli showing not running.

    Reply

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