I just wanted to access my ESX 4.0 server via https. Unfortunately I received a “503 Service unavailable” error. First I checked if the service was running:

service vmware-webAccess status

It wasn’t running so I started it:

service vmware-webAccess start

But why did this happen? Well page 7 of the vSphere Web Access Guide revealed it. As of ESX 4.0 this service has been disabled by default. If you do however need it on a regular base it might be a smart thing to enable it:

chkconfig --level 345 vmware-webAccess on