host service

[vinay1]

Hi Team,

Just want to know about the impact of restarting ESX host service. will there be any impact on VM running on ESX?

regards

VINAY 

[a_nut_in]

If you meant the "hostd" service, no. Unless you ahve an underlying storage issue

So service mgmt-vmware restart (on ESX)

or

services.sh restart (ESXi)

Regards

a

[vinay1]

Hi ,

I just want to know, what will be impacted on VMs running on the host if i restart the hostd and vpxa service of a host in production environment.

or do i have to put the host (ESX/ESXi) in maintenance mode before restarting the hostd and vpxa service. plz suggest.

regards

VINAY

[a_nut_in]

VM's are not impacted if the hosts are in normal working condition.

What that means is let's say the host is already facing massive storage issue - FC disconnects/iSCSI path failures etc. Doing a hostd restart can actually cause issues.

If APD's etc are seen, might also cause VM's to go down.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003490

Regards

a

[Sreejesh_D]

In normal case management agent restart wont affect the running VMs. The host will be disconnected from the vCenter server for a while and will be reconnected automatically once the management agent is started running. During this time all the VMs will be grayed out in vCenter server.

Also it will disconnect the direct host connection through vSphere Client if there are any.

Its recommended to put the host into maintenance mode before restarting the management agent or the host itself. Because in ESXi 3.5, 4 and 5 there were instances the hostd stuck will starting due to the SCSI errors in storage or the APD.

Though APD and storage errors are well handled in 5.1 I would suggest put the host into maintenance mode and do hostd restart.