VMware Cloud Community
xspader
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi4 and vcentre 4

Hi All

Wasted 2 days going through these forums and various kb articles trying to get the ESXi systems (in evaluation mode) into a vcentre server

I have

  • checked DNS
  • restarted management agents
  • reinstalled ESXi
  • checked ESXi config files to ensure correct IP's are there
  • set the IP address for the VCentre server

Dont know what else to do. All the systems are connected to the same switch in the lab with a blank config on it, no firewalls or anything else to block portsand are on the same subnet. Surely it isnt supposed to be this difficult?

Anyway I've given up for now but if there is anything anyone can add that could help as I'm going to try it again later, I would appreciate your input

Hayden

Reply
0 Kudos
3 Replies
a_p_
Leadership
Leadership

Welcome to the Community,

basically this shouldn't be much of an issue. Please provide some detail about any error messages or warnings your receive.

André

Reply
0 Kudos
xspader
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the reply Andre

Essentially I get the vmodl.fault.HostCommunication error and every tech article or community post I have tried has failed to resolve the issue. I just thought it was interesting that it didnt work despite trying everything I could find.

I can add the hosts to vcentre but they will become unresponsive almost straight away and then will be disconnected, on trying to reconnect I get the HostCommunication error.

Its only for a test lab so is not essential to be in vcentre, its just a nice to have. As I dont have the luxury of time or experience on my side to diagnose the issue I'll just move on with it as stand alone ESXi hosts. If the PoC works then we will be getting new hardware and will run VSphere 5 with vcentre which I will have much more time to ensure is right.

This is old tech so dont worry about it too much.

Reply
0 Kudos
VirtuallyMikeB

Good day!

Just to get some more information, try the following:

Once an ESXi host is installed and configured from the DCUI, start a continuous ping to it from your admin machine.  Keep track of this ping.  Then go through the process of adding it to vCenter.  Note if you receive the untrusted certificate prompt.  Once it's added to vCenter, wait for it to disconnect unexpectedly.  When it does disconnect, as you've been saying, pull the following logs and post as text files:

/var/log/hostd.log

/var/log/syslog.log

/var/log/vmkwarning.log

Cheers,

Mike Brown

http://VirtuallyMikeBrown.com

https://twitter.com/#!/VirtuallyMikeB

http://LinkedIn.com/in/michaelbbrown

----------------------------------------- Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you found it useful (you'll get points too). Mike Brown VMware, Cisco Data Center, and NetApp dude Sr. Systems Engineer michael.b.brown3@gmail.com Twitter: @VirtuallyMikeB Blog: http://VirtuallyMikeBrown.com LinkedIn: http://LinkedIn.com/in/michaelbbrown
Reply
0 Kudos