Hardware Monitoring of IBM x3850 servers running ESX4

[MrJayDee]

We have a number of new servers that were just installed with ESX4 and before that was done we made sure that all firmware (motherboard, HBA's, RSAII-adapters...the works) were updated to the latest and greatest. Now to the problem, when I look at the Hardware Status tab for any of the new ESX hosts the only thing that pops up is: "Hardware monitoring service on this host is not responding or not available".

Any idea what causes this?

[AndreTheGiant]

Have you see this KB?

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013080 - The Hardware Status tab displays the error: Hardware monitoring service on this host is not responding or not available

And also this thread:

Andre

[MrJayDee]

Yes, we've seen the KB regarding firewall settings so those have been verified and we have as the thread suggested disconnected the hosts and reconnected them but no change. We do get health status information if we logon to the host itself using the vSphere Client so we know that the hardware informtaion is collected, it is just not available in vCenter.

[AndreTheGiant]

DNS resolution is fine?

Is the only vCenter service that does not work? The plugins are fine?

Andre

[MrJayDee]

Yes, DNS works fine and other plugins too.

[AndreTheGiant]

No other ideas... sorry.

Try do delete (or rename) the DB located in:

C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\webapps\vws\data\VcCache-default-0.XhiveDatabase.DB

and restart the service:

"VMware VirtualCenter Management Webservices"

Andre

[MrJayDee]

We tried your suggestion to rename the file but after restart of the service we just get "You don't have the permission for this action" and in one case the tab diappered.

[venkyVM]

Will try to help you: Please gimme the following details

What OS is your vCentre server? Are you connecting to VC server through VI client on the same OS or remotely? Also try this,

restart all VMware services on the server and wait for approximately 5 minutes , before clicking on the Hardware Status tab.

Lemme know what you see...

[AndreTheGiant]

A new file was created?

Andre

[nkrick]

I am experiencing the exact same problems with 2 IBM HS21's. I can see the health when connected the the ESX server, but not to Virtual Center. ESX and VC are both up to date, on the same subnet, and network ports are open. I am using Windows 2008 R2 for the VC server, the firewall is disabled. I may end up calling support tomorrow...

[nkrick]

OOPS! I guess I should read the error message more closely. After upgrading to vCenter 4 U1 and removing and readding the host, hardware status works fine. I made the mistake of trying to look at the hardware status while the host was still in maintenance mode and I didn't read the error to see that it was telling me that it doesn't collect hardware status while in maintenance mode...

You may want to try upgrading to vCenter 4.0 U1 to see if it helps. I had the luxury of still testing my 3.5 to 4.0 upgrade, so there was no impact for me to install U1.

[MrJayDee]

This turned out to be a networkproblem after all, or network gurus dropped by and asked if there should be traffic on some port that I can't remember now, which they blocked. Once they updated the access list to let that traffic pass this works as designed.