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Brian_Wing
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‎07-10-2008 10:18 AM

ESX Servers show "disconnected" in VI and no HTTP direct access and Direct Console is locked up

So I'm feelign fairly hosed here folks. I have read a copule different posts regarding disk space on root partition filling up and one about a firewall issue

I haven't hard powered off my ESX servers (I have two with this predicament now!) I'm very hesitant to hard shut down but I'm running out of options.

If I can't get in on the console and can't get in on the HTTP manager is there really any other way to get into these things? HaX0rs help me!

Thanks

Wingman

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rmitchell9
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‎07-10-2008 10:24 AM

Are your VMs on shared storage?

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Brian_Wing
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‎07-10-2008 10:26 AM

Oh, a few other details.

The two ESX servers that have this issue are 3.0.2 builld 52542. I do have other ESX 3.0.2 systems that are correctly functioning, I also have a few 3.5 servers in this evnironment functioning properly.

Storage for these systems is locally attached disk, so no SAN in play on these.

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Brian_Wing
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‎07-10-2008 10:26 AM

I wish!

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rmitchell9
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‎07-10-2008 10:49 AM

crap... Im thinkin reinstall esx.. but I have not done that with local storage... My vm's are on a san ....I think you could reinstall as an upgrade ... there is a check box that has to do with keeping the vms on the local storaage If I remember correctly... you should get that confirmed ..

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Brian_Wing
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‎07-10-2008 11:09 AM

Sometimes I just want to kick myself...

Ok so F1 to get on the console not F11...attention to detail!

Anyhow. Once I logged into the console I did find a nice error message waiting on one of my ESX servers:

SCSI device sdb:2097151 512-byte hdwr sectors (1074MB)

I/O Error: dev 08:10, sector 0

Unable to read partition table

The other host exhibiting this behavior did not seem to have the same error or anything obvious...

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rmitchell9
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‎07-10-2008 03:49 PM

ah ... I mis-understood.. when you said you could not get on the console ... I thought you could not get on the console LoL

ok but at this point I dont have enough experience with CLI to help you ... Im sorry

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Brian_Wing
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‎07-10-2008 04:00 PM

So I went into /etc/rc3.d and restarted S98mgmt-vmware and this fixed one of my ESX server's issues. I've adjusted the SC Memory to 512 and will reboot this server when I get some downtime.

The other one appears to have some sort of I/O Error listed in my previous post.

It is a Dell 2950 and I saw another post stating something about the DRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller) so I need to schedule some downtime for this host and reboot and disable the Virtual Media setting in DRAC. We'll see if that fixes it.

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Brian_Wing
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‎07-29-2008 01:09 PM

So I ended up rebooting my last ESX server that would not come back on the console.

I found that the following helped get me reconnected:

1. Restarted VirtualCenter Server service on our Virtual Console server

2. Removed Virtual CD/Floppy stuff from the Dell Remote Access Controller ( DRAC )

3. Increased Service Console Memory to 512MB up from default 272 or something silly like that.

4. And of course, the standard server "reboot"

Hope this helps someone....

later

Wingman

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