Cannot connect to ESXi vSphere Web Client

[Vosman]

Hi,

Hopefully this is the right place to ask this question.

So I have a server at home with a ESXi 6.5 install that had been working fine. I have setup and managed VM's and been able to connect to the them without issue. However this has changed. I had to shutdown the server as I needed to relocate it. However now when I started it up I cannot connect to the web client and I get the browser error 10.0.0.200 refused to connect. I have an address reservation on my router for the esxi server which I can see from the server that it has picked up that address (10.0.0.200) and I can ping the server. I can also ping the network from the server using the trouble shooting options. I have also restarted the server, restarted the management network, enabled ssh and restarted services via the command line. I have also done all this on the server directly too using esxcli.

I used nmap to scan the server and can confirm that ports 80 and 443 are not open however other expected ports are, so there is obviously a problem with the web service somewhere but I can't pinpoint it. I have restarted and ensured hostd is running however no joy.

Any help with this would be great as I can't find another problem or solution to this anywhere.

Thanks in advance.

[daphnissov]

What is the output of vmware -v ?

[admin]

It looks like IP conflict on the network. Can you disable the vcenter  nic temporary  and try to ping Vcenter IP . If it is pinging than there will machine with the same IP.

Regards,

Randhir

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

Have you check your Web services inside the vCenter are in running mode and Secondly have you tried accessing the Web Client from vCenter itself where there will be no firewall or any other network rules ?

[Vosman]

Hi,

The output is:

Vmware ESXi 6.5.0 build-5310538

Thanks

[Vosman]

Hi,

I thought this may be the issue too however it does not appear to be. If I drop the ESXi server from the network there is no other machine on that IP that will answer any pings or scans. I also have the ESXi server on a reserved IP in 200 range on /24 network which is well beyond the rest of the devices on the network.

The ESXi server is set to get an IP via DHCP but there is a reservation on the router which the ESXi server gets because of the reservation.

I'll try removing the reservations and try connecting the server via DHCP and also try restarting the router again, but because the web services don't seem to be working on the ESXi server as the ports 80 and 443 are not open it seems most likely that the problem is something to do with this.

Thanks

[daphnissov]

When you login via SSH, what is the output of this command:  /etc/init.d/esxui status

[Vosman]

Hi daphnissov,

The output to /etc/init.d/esxui status is:

Running 'status' action

Nothing else after this which I assume is not good?

Thanks

[daphnissov]

Show output of esxcli software vib list | grep esx-ui

[Vosman]

[root@esxi:/] esxcli software vib list | grep esx-ui

[root@esxi:/]

So no output at all.

[root@esxi:/] esxcli software vib list

Connect to localhost failed: Connection failure.

[root@esxi:/]

So does this mean I need to reinstall something or repair the esxi image?

[Vosman]

Tried localcli instead:

[root@esxi:/] localcli software vib list | grep esx-ui

esx-ui     1.18.05270848     VMware     VMwareCertified     2017-07-22

[BenediktFrenzel]

Hi @Vosman

If you cannot connect to the webpage and esxcli is not working on the host, you may have a problem with the management services on the host itself.

Can you run the following commands?

/etc/init.d/hostd status

If it is not running start it via

/etc/init.d/hostd start

If it is running restart it via

/etc/init.d/hostd restart

You may also have to reboot the host, depens on the outcome of the previus actions.

- Benedikt

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

Can you check with different clients available in the vSphere 6.5

• vSphere Web Client - Adobe Flex (https://FQDN-or-IP-Address-of-VC/vsphere–client)
• vSphere Client - HTML5 (https://FQDN-or-IP-Address-of-VC/UI)
• Host Client - HTML5 (https://FQDN-or-IP-Address-of-ESXi-host/UI) (available since vSphere 6.0 Update 2)

[daphnissov · Accepted solution]

OP isn't using vCenter, Umesh, and the host client is what he can't access.

If you tried to run esxcli and it's failing, you're having a problem with the management agent. My advice: If this host isn't running critical workloads and you can reinstall it, do so. It sounds like it's acting strange after the power down and this will fix it. If you have local VMFS datastores on it, a reinstall can preserve those provided you select that option in the installer.

[Vosman]

Hi Daphnissov,

Thanks for all your help trying to diagnose this. Your train of thought was exactly what I was thinking too and so I ran the installer again on the server.

I have the esxi hyper-visor on a separate HDD and keep my VM's and other stuff on another set of HDD's so I basically ran the installer and chose to preserve the original install... just in case . It meant having to redo my network config in vSphere and reattach the NIC's for each VM but this has essentially solved the problem.

Thanks again for your help and to others that chipped in too.