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3 Replies Last post: Jun 28, 2009 7:55 PM by zhangtong3910  

Random ESXi host shutdown posted: Jun 28, 2009 7:08 AM

Click to view brettcarr1's profile Novice
brettcarr1
42 posts since
Jul 6, 2008

I have a whitebox PC (Quad Core Intel CPU, 8gb Ram, e1000 network card) Which has been running ESXi 3.5 happily for over a year. A week ago I installed ESXi 4 to a usb stick on the machine and it has also been running fine. However twice in the last 24 hours now the machine has randomly shutdown, (as if it has been powered off) powering it back on it boots fine and starts the relevant VM's without any issues. If I look in the logfiles in /var/log I can only see entries after the boot (nothing from when the problem happened), so how do I troubleshoot what is causing this random shutdown. ESXi 3.5 is still installed to the hard drive so if this happens again in the next few hours I will try rebooting from their and see if the problem still occurs (at least that way I can tell if it's hardware or software).

Has anybody else seen this behaviour or have any tips that my help identify what is causing it.

Thanks

Brett


Re: Random ESXi host shutdown

1. Jun 28, 2009 7:56 AM in response to: brettcarr1
Click to view DSTAVERT's profile Champion
DSTAVERT
3,514 posts since
Nov 30, 2003
You can set up a syslog server to capture the logs.

Is everything on the HCL?

The description of your observations and hardware doesn't lead to any "oh ya it's the bla bla bla" .
You really need to describe your hardware in detail.
Did you need to do anything unusual to get esxi 3.5 installed. Did you do an upgrade to the stick or a fresh install.
Any errors etc in the current logs?

Re: Random ESXi host shutdown

2. Jun 28, 2009 4:04 PM in response to: DSTAVERT
Click to view brettcarr1's profile Novice
brettcarr1
42 posts since
Jul 6, 2008

No the hardware isn't on the HCL as I said it's a white box pc with fairly standard hardware (Intel cpu and chipset Asus P5K Motherboard and Intel NIC) I could set up a syslog server your right but I'm confused as to why vmware doesn't preserve logs through reboots.

I have now come to the conclusion this is probably Heat related it has been much hotter than usual here in the UK in the last 24 hours and as I understand it the more recent Intel CPU's shut down when they get beyond a certain temperature.

Does anyone know how I can monitor cpu and motherboard temps from within ESXi obviously if I had Windows or Linux on the hardware then I could download utils to do this for me but how do I achieve the same result when running ESXi?

Brett


Re: Random ESXi host shutdown

3. Jun 28, 2009 7:55 PM in response to: brettcarr1
Click to view zhangtong3910's profile Enthusiast
zhangtong3910
37 posts since
Feb 10, 2009

Hi brettcarr1,

You can configue /etc/syslog.conf, so that the /var/log/message would be put into the hard disk storage.

Hope that helps.

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