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cdrombol
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Adding esxi host to vCenter fails

Hi Everyone,

I recently installed vCenter Server. I added the first host by fqdn with no issues at all. I tried to add the second host and it stopped the vCenter service and I my client was disconnected. When I start the service again, and connect via client the host shows up as disconnected displaying 7 of the 12 VM's as disconnected as well. All VM's and on the first host are still connected with no alarms.

This server was connected to another vCenter server over a month ago and removed, successfully I may add. I have tried to remove and reconnect several times, restart management agents and manually uninstall the vCenter agent using the "unsupported" console.

One thing I did notice is it gets to 8 or 9% and that is when the vCenter service is stopped. I opened up a second client to watch where it stops and it is right after "Select virtual NIC" show completed then nothing.

Any help would be very appreciated!

Thanks

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kac2
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ahh. there's your predicament.

Shutdown the VM. Click Remove from inventory.

Go to your other ESXi host. Browse the datastore, find the VM Folder, right click on the VM.vmx file and add to inventory.

power it on and you're good to go.

vice-versa for when you need to move them back.

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cdrombol
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I should mention the host is fully patched using the latest version of vCenter Server.

Thanks

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malaysiavm
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you are using FQDN for to add the ESX server, you may wanna check your DNS consistency

Craig

vExpert 2009

Malaysia VMware Communities -

Craig vExpert 2009 & 2010 Netapp NCIE, NCDA 8.0.1 Malaysia VMware Communities - http://www.malaysiavm.com
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cdrombol
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Yes, able to resolve host names from each host and also the vcenter host. DNS is working.

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kac2
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is it possible to just give your ESXi host a fresh format and then add it to vCenter? ..as long as you're not using local storage for VMs...

cdrombol
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Thanks.

So I just do a reinstall on the server? I am using iSCSI SAN as shared storage.

Will I have reconfigure everything as well?

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kac2
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yep. just download the disc, pop it in and re-install ESXi.

this will clear out ALL your confguration, but this really isn't that hard to put back in. It will take probably 20-30 minutes. Probably less time than you've spent trying to get it to bind to a new vCenter.

just make notes of hostname, vkernel ip addresses, and everything else you can copy from what your other hosts have for NTP, port groups, etc.

Remember to disable HA and DRS before adding the host to the cluster. Verify all port groups line-up accordingly for HA and DRS rules. Then enable HA and DRS once again.

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kac2
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Also, you can check out this script by William Lam. it can export and import ESXi configurations

ghettoHostProfile.pl (Supports ESXi only)

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11969

cdrombol
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Dumb question but without vMotion, how can I start the vm's on the other host or if I can't when I startup the fresh esxi host, how do I import those vm's back onto the host?

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kac2
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ahh. there's your predicament.

Shutdown the VM. Click Remove from inventory.

Go to your other ESXi host. Browse the datastore, find the VM Folder, right click on the VM.vmx file and add to inventory.

power it on and you're good to go.

vice-versa for when you need to move them back.

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cdrombol
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Thanks kac2.

Get this...

I started moving the machines over to the other host. I moved one in particualar and it crashed vCenter. So I removed it from both hosts inventory and was able to add them both successfully!

Not sure what I am going to do with the rogue machine...probably rebuild as it is just a test sql database and I have backups of just the dbase...

Thanks for all your help!

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kac2
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make sure that you only power it on 1 ESX host. you will end up with locked file errors.

Kendrick Coleman

www.kendrickcoleman.com<http://www.kendrickcoleman.com>;

twitter: @KendrickColeman

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