Manually migrate VMs from unresponsive host.

[xevrebyc]

I have a 3 host cluster.  One of the Hosts has become unresponsive.  All the VMs connected to the unresponsive host are still running and I can RDP to them.  I am able to SSH to the unresponsive host but not connect via vCenter. 

Will restarting the services terminate the running VMs?  If not then what is the command to restart the services?

What is the best plan to manually migrate these VMs to the other two hosts?

[Jim4649 · Accepted solution]

From SSH, cd to \usr\sbin  then run "services.sh restart" (without the quotes). That will restart the management services, with no impact to your VM's. You should then be able to re-connect to it with Vcenter.

[xevrebyc]

Should this be \sbin rather than \usr\sbin?

[Jim4649]

Look in \usr\sbin and you should see services.sh

[nava_thulasi39]

Hi,

/usr/sbin is link of /sbin only. So both the links points to the same location.

And the other method is from http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100349...

To restart the management agents on ESXi:

1. Connect to the console of your ESXi host.
   
2. Press F2 to customize the system.
   
3. Login as root.
   
4. Use the Up/Down arrows to navigate to Restart Management Agents.
   
   Note: In ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0, this option is available under Troubleshooting Options.
   
   
   
5. Press Enter.
   
6. Press F11 to restart the services.
   
7. When the service has been restarted, press Enter.
   
8. Press Esc to log out of the system.
   

[xevrebyc]

The consolse was locked as well.  I could only connect via SSH.

[Jim4649]

Yes, and you can also do it from the console, as you indicated below. Once you’ve restarted the mgmt. agents, there should be no need to migrate those VMs, since the host is probably running just fine.

[Jim4649]

So did you restart agents via SSH?

[xevrebyc]

Thanks for the help!   Restarting the services worked.

In the event that this did not work.  What is the best way to move the VMs to the other hosts?