Failed to login to by SOAP, port 443, user "root", proxy srv: port:0

[mrbiggles]

We are having a reasonably serious issue where we lose communication with our ESXi server via the client.

None of the VM’s inside the ESXi server are affected, only the ESXi server itself.

This is the error:

Failed to login to "192.168.7.155" by SOAP, port 443, user "root", proxy srv: port:0

Unable to connect to the remote server

A connection attempt failed because the connected party did not properly respond after a period of time, or established connection failed because connected host has failed to respond 192.168.7.155:443"

- I still do not think that there is anything wrong with ESXi server itself, mainly because if we change external factors, the problems go away.

- Am able to always connect no matter what - a spare notebook directly into the back of the server to the network card on the back of the server.

- Am able to always connect no matter what by connecting the network card off the back of the server directly into five Port Cisco dumb switch and then plugging the notebook into the Cisco switch also.

- If I plug a spare PC directly into the Cisco switch or directly into the server, I am also able to connect through the ESxi client even when it will not work via other means.

- If I remove all network cables from the Netgear switch except for the server and either the notebook or spare machine, I am able to connect through to the ESXi client, so long as the problem has not already occurred.

- If the problem has already occurred, then no matter what I do on the Netgear switch, it times out with the 443 error.

- If I then reset the Netgear switch with only the server and either the notebook or spare PC then most of the time the client will be available again and will be consistently available.

- While it is working, if I then plugged our router back in to the Netgear switch. The client will continue to work for a short period of time. However after about 30 seconds to a minute, it then starts to time out.

- At this point even if I pull out the router network cable, I cannot get the client to work again without either plugging the cables back into the isolated five Port Cisco switch, plugging directly into the back the server with the notebook, or unplugging all equipment and restarting Netgear switch.

- This problem occurs on multiple switches inside our rack.

- Currently the server has an IP address of 192.168.7.155, it used to have two network cards. At present it only has one and the only address is the .155 address.

- We are currently seeing the error at this present moment in time and from the terminal server when I try and access the client through IP address 192.168.7.155, I see the following entry in the router each time, and I think that there is some form of interference that is causing this problem.

ROUTER ENTRY - Jul 28 02:47:08 last message repeated 1 time(s)

Jul 28 02:47:08 kernel: PF Accept crey_sec_mail: IN=ppp0 OUT=eth0.3 SRC=192.168.7.156 DST=192.168.7.120 LEN=52 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=127 ID=1468 DF PROTO=TCP SPT=62439 DPT=443 WINDOW=8192 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0　

Jul 28 02:47:14 httpd: Authentication successful for root from 192.168.7.170　

.120 is our domain controller & exchange server.

The esxi server used to be setup with 192.168.7.156 but was reset and is currently 192.168.7.150 so I am unsure why the router is picking it up that way.

- I have disabled all Creydall rules and port forwards, however this did not resolve the problem.