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Diagnosing an ESXi/ESX host that is disconnected or not responding in vCenter Server (1003409)

Symptoms

  • An ESXi/ESX host shows as Not Responding in VirtualCenter / vCenter Server
  • An ESXi/ESX host shows as Disconnected in vCenter Server
  • You cannot connect an ESXi/ESX host to vCenter Server
  • Virtual machines on an ESXi/ESX host show as grayed out in vCenter Server
  • When attempting to add an ESXi/ESX host to vCenter Server, you see an error similar to:

    Unable to access the specified host, either it doesn't exist, the server software is not responding, or there is a network problem

Purpose

This article guides you through the process of troubleshooting an ESXi/ESX host that is in a disconnected or a not responding state in vCenter Server. It provides steps to help you eliminate common causes for your problem by verifying that the configuration of your networking and management server agents is correct, as well as confirming the availability of resources on your ESXi/ESX host.

Resolution

Validate that each troubleshooting step below is true for your environment. Each step provides instructions or a link to a document to eliminate possible causes and take corrective action as necessary. The steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and identify the proper resolution. After each step, try to connect to vCenter Server. Do not skip a step.

ESXi

  1. Verify that the ESXi host is in a powered on state.

  2. Verify that the ESXi host can be reconnected, or if reconnecting the ESXi host resolves the issue. For more information, see Changing an ESXi or ESX host's connection status in vCenter Server (1003480).

  3. Verify that the ESXi host is able to respond back to vCenter Server at the correct IP address. If vCenter Server does not receive heartbeats from the ESXi host, it goes into a not responding state. To verify if the correct Managed IP Address is set, see Verifying the vCenter Server Managed IP Address (1008030) and ESXi 5.0 hosts are marked as Not Responding 60 seconds after being added to vCenter Server (2020100). See also, ESXi/ESX host disconnects from vCenter Server after adding or connecting it to the inventory (2040630)

  4. Verify that network connectivity exists from vCenter Server to the ESXi host. For more information, see Testing network connectivity with the ping command (1003486).

  5. Verify that you can connect from vCenter Server to the ESXi host on TCP/UDP port 902. If the host was upgraded from version 2.x and you cannot connect on port 902, then verify that you can connect on port 905. For more information, see Testing port connectivity with Telnet (1003487).

  6. Verify if restarting the ESXi Management Agents resolves the issue. For more information, see Restarting the Management agents on an ESXi or ESX host (1003490).

  7. ESXi hosts can disconnect from vCenter Server due to underlying storage issues. To investigate further, see Identifying Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS storage issues on ESXi/ESX hosts (1003659).

ESX

  1. Verify that the ESX host is in a powered on state.

  2. Verify that the ESX host can be reconnected, or if reconnecting the ESX host resolves the issue. For more information, see Changing an ESXi or ESX host's connection status in vCenter Server (1003480).

  3. Verify that the ESX host is able to respond back to vCenter Server at the correct IP address. If vCenter Server does not receive heartbeats from the ESX host, it goes into a not responding state. To verify if the correct Managed IP Address is set, see Verifying the vCenter Server Managed IP Address (1008030). See also, ESXi/ESX host disconnects from vCenter Server after adding or connecting it to the inventory (2040630)

  4. Verify that network connectivity exists from vCenter Server to the ESX host. For more information, see Testing network connectivity with the ping command (1003486).

  5. Verify that you can connect from vCenter Server to the ESX host on TCP/UDP port 902. If the ESX host was upgraded from version 2.x and you cannot connect on port 902, then verify that you can connect on port 905. For more information, see Testing port connectivity with Telnet (1003487).

  6. Verify that the ESX management service vmware-hostd is running. For more information, see Verifying that the Management Service is running on an ESX host (1003494) and Troubleshooting vmware-hostd service if it fails or stops responding on an ESXi/ESX host (1002849).

  7. Verify that the VirtualCenter agent service vmware-vpxa is running. For more information, see Verifying that the vCenter Server Agent Service is running on an ESX host (1003495).

  8. Verify that the xinetd service is running. If xinetd is not running, authentication may fail. For more information, see Determining if the xinetd service is running on an ESX host (1007323).

  9. Verify if restarting the ESX Management Agents resolves the issue. For more information, see Restarting the Management agents on an ESXi or ESX host (1003490).

  10. Verify that no processes are over-utilizing the resources on the Service Console. For more information, see Checking for resource starvation of the ESX Service Console (1003496).

  11. ESX hosts can disconnect from vCenter Server due to underlying storage issues. To investigate further, see Identifying Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS storage issues on ESXi/ESX hosts (1003659).


Note: If your problem still exists after trying the steps in this article:

Additional Information

For additional information, see:

For translated versions of this article, see:

Tags

not-responding service-console esx-host-disconnected esx-host-disconnected-from-vc

See Also

Update History

04/18/2011 - Added links to 1002849 and 1003659 05/13/2011 - Added link to 1011878 10/18/2011 - Added a new step 1 to both ESX and ESXi procedures 10/11/2012 - Added links to translations 01/29/2013 - Added link to 2020100 02/07/2013 - Added link to 2040630

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