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Cannot access the Service Console or manage virtual machines
Details
The symptoms of this condition are:
The virtual machines appear to be operational, but you cannot access the Service Console or any services that it provides
The ping fails to the Service Console by its IP address or hostname from another system on the network
Unable to access the Management User Interface of the ESX host or use the Remote Console to interact with any of the virtual machines
Unable able to connect to the server via FTP, SSH, or Telnet
During this time, virtual machine services like web services, database servers, file sharing are available
Solution
To resolve this issue:
This condition can occur when the Service Console network card loses its connection to the network switch. Typically, this is a result of a problem with the auto-negotiation between the network card driver and the switch port.
To reinitialize the network controller:
Log into the Service Console locally as the root user
Run the following command:
/etc/init.d/network restart
You can now access the Service Console remotely.
To prevent this problem, manually specify the speed and duplex of the network connection for both the driver and the switch port. For more information, see:
