This article provides troubleshooting steps to determine why an ESXi host is inaccessible from vSphere Client.
Symptoms:
- ESXi host is not responding to vCenter Server
- All virtual machines that are registered to the ESXi host are grayed out.
- You are unable to connect to the ESXi host directly using vSphere Client.
- The vpxd.log files residing in vCenter Server may contain events indicating an error when attempting to communicate with the ESXi host. The events always contain the words vmodl.fault.HostCommunication and may appear similar to the following examples:
[VpxLRO] -- ERROR task-internal-6433833 -- host-24499 -- vim.host.NetworkSystem.queryNetworkHint: vmodl.fault.HostCommunication:
(vmodl.fault.HostCommunication) {
dynamicType = <unset>,
faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,
msg = "",
}
[VpxdMoHost::CollectRemote] Stats collection cannot proceed because host may no longer be available or reachable: vmodl.fault.HostCommunication.
For more information on the location of the vpxd.log file, see
Location of vCenter Server log files (1021804) .
The issue may appear on multiple hosts, keep note on the opID that identifies the offending ESXi host:
2012-04-09T15:03:51.540-04:00 [29348 verbose 'Default' opID=f6a80d55] [ServerAccess] Attempting to connect to service at vc1.hostname.vmware.net:10443
- If this issue occurs due to a communication issue between the ESXi host and the vCenter Server, but the host is still responsive to user interaction, you may see events similar to these in the /var/log/vmware/vpxa.log files:
Failed to bind heartbeat socket (-1). Using any IP.
Agent can't send heartbeats.msg size: 66, sendto() returned: Network is unreachable.