ESX 3.5 - VC2.5 Hanging Up

[stanj]

We have installed ESX Server 3.5 on eight Dell 2950’s (dual 2.66 ghz quad core) with 16 GB of RAM and 1 TB of disk space each.

These are standalone ESX Servers – no SAN used currently.

VC 2.5 is running on a Dell 2850.

The VMware Configuration Maximums Guide “recommends” 32 as a maximum value for ESX host storage.

The beginning of the document states “The limits presented in this document can be affected by other factors, such as hardware dependencies:

This seems to leave it open to running load test and gathering statistics to determine the number of VM’s per host.

Currently, we have between 35 and 50 VM’s on each ESX host running a mix of OS

(Windows 2003 Svr, 2000 Svr, 2000 Pro, Xp, Vista, Ubuntu, Fedora Core, etc.)

The are running so far and the memory usage is at about 65% and CPUusage is low.

With that said,

We have seen some strange behavior in VC.

We had an instance where ESX server control in the VC hung.

We tried shutting down a group of VM’s running on ESX 3.5 and in the VC and everything froze.

Access to the other ESX boxes in VC seemed to be ok as operations continued.

We logged out of the VC and logged back in and the ESX access still was hung.

We tried to reboot the ESX and it did no good as VC still hung on that ESX after logging into VC.

Next rebooted the ESX..

Still hung.

Had to reinstall (upgrade option) ESX on the 2950 to get VC talking again to the ESX box..

Any ideas?

This is quite perplexing.

We also see in VC that after an alarm occurs like a warning message on memory, that alarm is not cleared even if the memeory dropps below the alarm threshold.

It takes a power of on to rest it.

Is this a bug in VC 2.5?

Any ideas..

I opened a support request (below) but since we are using an EVAL License, have not heard back.

Any help would be appreciated..

thanks

[opbz]

Hi

Want to clarify somethings

I assume your VMs where all still running and the only problem was with the VC serer being able to manage the the ESX server?

Here are a couple of things I try.

1: connect to the ESX server itself is it visible and is it working ok. Chances are it will be.

2: enable SSH access to the esx server and try connecting to it. if all is well try restarting the following services to see what happens

service mgmt-vmware restart

service vmware-vpxa restart

3: if you are still unable to manage the server through VC try removing the ESX server from it then readding it... if this is not possible on the server try the following commands again (through putty) and try again

rpm -qa | grep -i vmware-vpxa this will give you an rpm number use it on the next command

rom -e VMware-vpxa-2.5XXXXX

now try re -adding it to your VC server and see if it remains manageable.

hoping this helps

[stanj]

Thanks.

The next time I see the problem, I will try the suggestions.

I have not seen any other postings or reports showing the same problems with ESX 3.5 and VC 2.5.