We are seeing the same problem. We are using DL580 G4 /G5 hardware running on ESX 3.5 U2 with 8.1 agents. The vmware-hostd hits the hard limit of 200 Mb and stops.

The strange thing is that we have been running fine since update 2, nothing has changed. One cluster is running 50 to 1 (30 to 1 on the others) and that is the cluster suffering from the hostd problem. So I assume it has something to do with the amount of VMs running on the box.

We are investigating on using (and opened a support case for this one):

Edit the config.xml under /etc/vmware/hostd and add the following into the <config> section:</s<em>

<hostdWarnMemInMB>200</hostdWarnMemInMB>

<hostdStopMemInMB>250</hostdStopMemInMB>

I will keep you updated!

Greetz,

Virtrix