Strange issue this morning. I have a ESX3.0.1 server show up as not responding, HA agent has an error, etc. The VM's are set to leave power on in the cluster and continue to run just fine.
I look at the hardware and drive #2 activity light is solid green (setup for RAID1). The error light is fine and the on-board diagnostics show no errors (IBM 3850).
I did a ssh into the console to poke around and we can't issue any commands, other than those loaded in the kernel like "ls". Incidentally, ls shows only "total 0".
The "su -" command returns "-bash: /bin/su: Input/output error".
service command (to try & restart vpxa, etc.) return "-bash: service: command not found"
We are not Linux guru's but we get the feeling that the local file system is not mounted anymore yet the VM's are running.
The good news is the upper management is impressed that VMware is still running it's VM's. 