VMWare Server 2 unter Windows 7 64 bit: 503 Service Unavailable

7. July 2010

Installing VMWare Server 2.0 on a Windows 7 64 bit host has some problems (at least in Version 2.0.2). The installation wizard completes successfully, accessing the local VMWare Server Homepage (localhost:8333/ui) results in an error ‘503 Service Unavailable‘, though.

The first guess was that the Tomcat instance installed by VMWare Server did not run. Executing “Configure Tomcat” terminated immediately with the error ‘Unable to open the service VMWareServerWebAccess‘. I also found that the local service “VMware Server Web Access” was not started, although it was set to “automatic startup”. It could not even be started manually. Searching for these problems on the web, I finally found this forum post at VMWare, which showed the solution for this problem: Under Windows 7 64 bit, the Tomcat instance installed by VMWare Server has to be run in compability mode “Windows XP Service Pack 3″:

Step 1:
Find Tomcat.exe at C:\Programme (x86)\VMWare\VMWare Server\tomcat\bin go to Settings – Compatibility and select “Change settings for all users”.

Step 2:
Select the compatibility mode “Windows XP (Service Pack 3)”.

Step 3:
Start the service “VMWare Server Web Access” (or reboot to start it automatically). Done.