ESXi 4.1 Server running on CentOS

[wesandmarlene]

We have an ESXi 4.1 server running on CentOS.  I use the vSphere client to access this ESXi server to start\stop the 3 VMs that we've created on it.  Last week the power went out brining down this ESXi server.  The ESXi server was brought back up but now when I open my vSphere client I cannot connect to the ESXi server.  I used to be able to ping the ESXi server ip with DOS or Putty but now when I attempt to ping it I get a response of "Request Timed Out".

I'm not familiar with the administration of a ESXi server.  A coworker of mine has already tried rebooting the server so that the server was shutdown and restarted in a graceful manner.  But once the server is completly back up we still are in the same sitution, we cannot ping the server remotely or connect to it via our vSphere client.

Prior to losing power we were connecting to this ESXi server without problems.

Can someone tell me (or direct me) on how to stop and start ESXi services on the machine.  Any suggestions are appreciated.  Thank you in advance,

Wes

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - Just to clarify - are you running ESXi under VMware Workstation on CentOS? Because the issue might not be with your ESXi installation but VMware Workstation or your machine -

[wesandmarlene]

No, pretty sure were not, the ESXi 4.2 server software is installed directly on the CentOS operating system. On my laptop, I use the vSphere client to connect to this remote ESXi server to start and stop the 3 VMs that we've created.

[weinstein5]

ESXi does not get installed on top of an OS - it runs on the bare metal -  Do yoou have access to the console of the machine it is installed on? If you do watch as it boots and see if there are any errors being thrown as the ESXi host restarts?

[wesandmarlene]

Didn't know that.  I do have access to the machine that it's installed on and will try what your suggesting tomorrow morning.  A coworker has rebooted the machine once and didn't mention seeing any errors when it came back up, he's a newbie like me though when it comes to ESXi administration.  Thank you for the quick response.

[Linjo]

Also, there is no ESXi version called 4.2. Its 4.1 or 5.0.

// Linjo

[wesandmarlene]

I agree, made a mistake, it's version 4.1.

[wesandmarlene]

I was able to get to the machine that has ESXi installed.  When the box is rebooted it boots without errors but stops at a GRUB prompt.  We have another ESXi server that works without issues right now and after it reboots it goes to a ESXi Configuration Homepage after the entire boot process is complete.  It looks like my issue is that the non-working ESXi server stops at the GRUB command prompt and does not continue onto this same ESXI Configuration Homepage as our working ESXi server.  I found this URL and am wondering whether "Option 1" might be the steps that need to be run to correct my problem.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100790...

I'm just not sure how to determine some of the values that I need to know to complete "Option 1", specifically how do I determine the location of the /boot directory from a GRUB command prompt (which is needed for step 1)?

How do I determine the kernel name and the UUID from a GRUB command prompt (which is needed for step 2)?

I also attached a screenshot of the commands that I have available to run at this GRUB command prompt.  The "df -h" that the above URL above suggests is not an option and the ls command does not work either.

[wesandmarlene]

I got past the initial issue of how the machine was stopping at the GRUB command prompt.  I noticed that somebody had left a Solaris boot disk in the CD Rom drive.  When the server was being rebooted each time it must have been defaulting to boot from the CD Rom because when I removed the CD, then did another reboot it came up to the default VMWware screen.

I still have issues connecting to this ESXi server remotely though.  So I restarted the Management agents from the admin console on the box, thinking this might fix it….. no luck…  I then do a “Test Management Network” option while at the box, the ping of the default gateway is failing…..  I also cannot ping the IP of the ESXi server from my laptop….

Wes

[wesandmarlene]

This problem has been resolved.  If anyone else out there has a similar issue, this is how I got past the last part of this issue:

In the administration console, I selected the “Configure Management Network” option, then the “Network Adapters” option.  On this screen I could see that the selected network card (“vmnic0”) was one that was currently disconnected and that there was another network card (“vmnic1”) that I could select that was connected.  I modified this setting and rebooted the server.  Once the server was completely back up we were able to ping the ESXi server remotely with DOS and Putty and connect to the ESXi Server with the vSphere client tool.