ESXi 5.0 Virtual Machines Randomly Powering Off

[Divide_Conquor]

I'm hoping someone can point me in the right direction. I'm running esxi 5.0. Randomly, my virtual machines will be powered off. Can someone point me in the right direction on which logs I need to look into on the host that might point me in a good troubleshooting direction? I don't even know where to start.

Thanks in advance.

[Bill_Fleury]

Well, lets start with the basics - are these Windows machines?  Perhaps check the system event log- see if there's something inside of the guest triggering a shutdown.  Also check the tasks/events on the machine in the vSphere client - does it actually mention anything on a vmware level about them shutting down?

When the machines are powered back on, do they boot up normally or do they come up from a crashed state and want to check file systems etc?

[mcowger]

Also, is there any indication in the host logs that the host rebooted?

[Divide_Conquor]

Thanks for the reply.

Both Windows VMs and Linux VMs will randomly shut down. Other VMs will remain online and function properly.

Last night 2 of my VMs unexpectantly shut down at the same exact time (I verified with the windows event logs). Other VMs continued to work.

Today one box randomly powered itself off.

After reading your post and starting my reply, I went out and took a look at the Events tab on the machines that crashed on me (duh).

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=103028...

This is the issue I'm having. The error log in the kb article is what I'm seeing on each VM.

I'm not looking for support on the issue (although I wont complain if someone can tell me what's going on), just was wanting to get pushed in the right direction, which looks like you did!

[Bill_Fleury]

I would double check that the server you're running these on us listed in the HCL on VMWare's site. Good luck!

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