Recently we had some strange problems with our 6.5 lab vCenter (Windows version with MSSQL Server db), which frequently crashed. After some digging in vpxd logs it seem to be related to vc db permissions:

“17-05-28T19:36:53.443+02:00 error vpxd[05420] [Originator@6876 sub=Default] [VdbStatement] SQLError was thrown: “ODBC error: (42000) – [Micrsoft][SQL Server Native Client 11.0][SQL Server]VIEW SERVER STATE permission was denied on object ‘server’, database ‘master’.” is returned when executing SQL statement “SELECT  DB_NAME(mf.DATABASE_ID) Db_Name,            CASE mf.FILE_ID WHEN 1 THEN ‘DATA’                            WHEN 2 THEN ‘LOG’            END File_Type,            vol.VOLUME_MOUNT_POINT AS Drive,            CONVERT(INT,vol.AVAILABLE_BYTES/1048576.0) FreeSpaceInMB,            (mf.SIZE*8)/1024 VCDB_Space_Mb,             mf.PHYSICAL_NAME Physical_Name,             SERVERPROPERTY(‘edition’) Sql_Server_Edition,             SERVERPROPERTY(‘productversion’) Sql_Server_Version            FROM            SYS.M” action.“

The SQL execution is failing as the vCenter Server database user has no permisss on ‘master’ database, to resolve this issue, grant additional privileges to the vCenter Server database user:

use master
go
grant VIEW SERVER STATE to [vCenter_database_user]
go
GRANT VIEW ANY DEFINITION TO [vCenter_database_user]
go