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ESX/ESXi hosts are sporadically disconnected from vCenter Server due to hostd failure (2017008)

Symptoms

  • Random ESX/ESXi hosts intermittently disconnect from vCenter Server
  • hostd fails sporadically
  • vpxa shuts down because it is unable to establish a connection to hostd
  • In the vpxa logs, you see entries similar to:

    [2011-07-05 09:43:46.903 F712DB90 error 'App'] [VpxaInvtHost] Can't connect to hostd/serverd. Shutting down...
    [2011-07-05 09:43:46.903 F712DB90 info 'App'] [Vpxa] Shutting down now
  • The hostd.log is terminated without mentioning  rotating...
  • watchdog logs report messages similar to these in /var/log/messages:

    watchdog-hostd: '/usr/sbin/vmware-hostd /etc/vmware/hostd/config.xml -u' exited after 3125299 seconds 134
  • You may see hostd core(s) generated under /var/core/core-vix-async-pipe-pid-EPOCH.gz
  • The /var/log/vmware/hostd-support.tgz file may be available, which contains the last message from hostd similar to:
[2011-07-05 09:43:46.346 F639C900 verbose 'App'] [Search::GetInfo] Successfully opened disk: /vmfs/volumes/xxxx.../.snapshot/PATH/VM/DISK.vmdk
[2011-07-05 09:43:46.439 F639C900 info 'DiskLib'] DISKLIB-VMFS  : Failed to stat backing file "/vmfs/volumes/xxxx.../.snapshot/PATH/VM/DISK-flat.vmdk": The system cannot find the file specified (ok if doing migrate).
[2011-07-05 09:43:46.439 F639C900 info 'DiskLib'] DISKLIB-LIB   : Failed to get info : The system cannot find the file specified (25).

Resolution

VMware is aware of this issue.
 
This issue is resolved in ESXi 4.1 Update 3 and ESXi 5.0 Update 1.
 
To download ESXi 4.1 Update 3 or ESXi 5.0 Update1, see the VMware Download Center.

Additional Information

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Update History

09/12/2012 - Added information that issue is resolved in ESXi 4.1 Update 3

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