After ESX reboot vSphere Client doesn't respond / Web 503 Service Unavailable (for 15 minutes)

[philwett]

Hello

When I reboot my ESX 4.0 server (HP Proliant DL 360 G5) i cannot login with vSphere Client for about 15 minutes. After 15 minutes it is working again. Also the website gets 503 Service Unavailable for approx 15 minutes then everything is working perfectly.

I try differend reboots, with maintenance mode and without (vm are suspended).

It's very strange, because this didn't happen from the beginning.

SSH Login does work all the time. ESX doens't get any error message at boot up.

It is strange that it needs about 15 minutes, but since after it works well im still happy.

Anyone?

Thanks

Phil

[silvrhand]

I have the same thing as well, it seems to only happen on one of my machines though.

I did notice that the /etc/vmware/webAccess/cache.properties file doesn't exist, the soft link is broken.

[philwett]

Hello Silvrhand

I have the cache.properties on my esx:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 97 Jun 19 19:05 cache.properties -> /usr/lib/vmware/webAccess/tomcat/apache-tomcat-6.0.16/webapps/ui/WEB-INF/classes/cache.properties

It seems very odd.

Anyone any idea why this happens?

Thanks

Phil

[Fredzone]

Hello,

I had exactly the same problem at a customer site on both DELL PowerEdge R905.

I upgraded from ESX 3.5u4 to ESX 4.0 via the Upgrade host client (so not with Update Manager). The upgrade process was ok.

But after the first boot, I had the problem on both servers. During 5 minutes, I can't reach the server via VI Client or the web interface but the ping and ssh worked fine. After the 5 minutes, everything went fine.

I also tried a full reinstallation of ESX 4.0 but I also had the same problem on both servers.

I did find any usefull information about this problem execpt your post because this is exactly the same problem as mine.

Any update about that from your part or VMware ?

Thanks

Fred

[bjarne-dssd]

Hi Fredzone,

i have the same problem like many other people:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/216408

Very good QA Testing by VMware ...

[Fredzone]

Thanks for your info. But I already tried many of the workaround that are explained in these posts.

I tried the beta and RC versions of vSphere but I never had that kind of behavior ...

[philwett]

hi all

yesterday I rebooted the esx machine, and the vsphere access was within one minute ok. strange...

the reboot was not differend than other times.

[marksynergit]

I am experiencing the same problem with vSphere 4.0 fresh install/esx 4.0...installed it worked fine. shut it down and now when it comes up I have the same issue as described where you can't login via web or with viclient. Any fix for this yet?

[antivir]

Guys, this is not bug but feature.

To connect via vSphere client or to connect to cluster Esx-server must resolve himself (only). If you have any nameserver in resolv.conf - esx will try to resolve himself via that server regardless of /etc/hosts's content. If that dns-server is inaccessible or it hasn't records about esx - you get "503 Service Unavailable" during about 15 min. After that esx will "remember" of /etc/hosts.

Esx makes record about himself in /etc/hosts automatically every booting.

It's only about connect to esx.

For proper work HA you need:

1.

-nameserver in resolv.conf (nameserver must be accessible, contain all A and PTR records about all esx-servers in cluster)

or

-empty resolv.conf and records about all esx-servers in all /etc/hosts at all esx-servers in cluster.

2. ESX-server does not need any dns-records about vCenter.

3. HA works without vCenter.

For proper work vCenter (DPM, DRS) you need:

• accessible dns-server to resolve himself (vCenter) and to resolve all esx-servers in cluster (A and PTR)

or

-no specified dns-server field and all esx-servers in windows/system32/drivers/etc/hosts (don't remember to add full name of vCenter (like vcenter.domain.com), it need to resolve himself too)

P.S. If you use /etc/hosts-resolving and HA does not work, change all hosts records

192.168.100.115 esx1.domain.com

like this

192.168.100.115 esx1.domain.com esx1

Sorry for bad English.

WBR, valhalla

[iammistercraig]

A feature might be better explained in the install itself. This looks more like a problem.