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vNab
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi error : 503 service unavailable

We have a HP DL 380 G7 server with ESXi 5.1 installed, The host has grayed out in the vCenter about an hour ago and the "not responding" appeared in front of its name.

I can ping the host and all VMs are running and responding.

I searched and founded that "restarting the management agents" may solve the problem (KB1003490), then:

  • I tried to login through DCUI to access the host and restart the management agents, but after typing the root password, nothing comes up. There was no response from the host through DCUI
  • I tried to login to the host directly from vSphere Client with the "root" account, but I couldn't.
  • I opened the host in a browser, there was just one error : 503 service unavailable

What should I do to solve the problem?

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dwipanji
Contributor
Contributor

I have faced it , and I have did these things, please try at yours :

1.  Login dcui from ssh client

     type : dcui

     next do the same step like when you login at DCUI.

2.  If it doesn't work, please check your hosts file at ESXI, make sure the "127.0.0.0 localhost.localdomain localhost" hostname is exist.

    in SSH client type: vi /etc/hosts

3.  Do restart hostd and vpxa service, and makesure those service is running.

     in SSH client type:

     /etc/init.d/hostd status   if status is not running, please type : /etc/init.d/hostd start

     /etc/init.d/vpxa status   if status is not running, please type : /etc/init.d/vpxa start

please try those step, if it's not working, tell us ..

cheers

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beckham007fifa

can you connect it through vsphere client, i mean without VC? Also, check VMkernal and messages...

Regards, ABFS
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vNab
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you for answers, but the problem happened about 6 months ago and I did the followings:

- I found that the host might crash soon (I searched and found a similar situation which resulted to the PSOD)

- There was no way to contact with the host (The SSH service was not running by default, and the DCUI not responding, as I mentioned  in the first post)

- I decided to shut down all the VMs (through RDP to each VM) and reboot the host, but when some VMs has been powered off, the error disappeared and every thing backed to normal. We had updated the host from 4.1 U1 to 5.1 U1, and maybe it made the issue.

Finally, I migrated all VMs and made a fresh installation of ESXi 5.1 U1 on the host.

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sarikrizvi
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Try below cmds to check/start hostd service

/etc/init.d/hostd status >>>> /etc/init.d/hostd start  

Check hostd status , if it's not started then check /var/log/vmkernel.log , /var/log/hostd.log and /var/log/vpxa.log  (take action accordingly as per error in log)

When esxcli cmd not working you can run localcli cmd instead of esxcli .

# localcli network firewall get

# localcli network firewall set --enable false

# localcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true

# localcli vm process list

# localcli vm process kill -w <World ID> -t soft     (Shutdown VMs)

Regards,
SARIK (Infrastructure Architect)
vExpert 2018-2020 | vExpert - Pro | NSX | Security
vCAP-DCD 6.5 | vCP-DCV 5.0 | 5.5 | 6.0 | vCA-DCV 5 | vCA-Cloud 5 | RHCSA & RHCE 6 | A+ (HW & NW)
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