VM's are greyed out/italic and show as Disconnected but are still running

[wdresen]

Im running version 5.1 with Ent+ licensing. In vCenter Server I have numerous machines that show greyed out and in italics and aldo are listed as (Disconnected). The machines are powered on, respond to ping, and I can RDP to them. Any thoughts as to why they show that way?

[weinstein5]

I am assuming you are seeing this when connected to vCenter - it sounds like the vcenter server has lost communication to the ESXi host but the ESXi host is still up and running - I would first look at the physical networking to this host -

[michaelstump]

You can also try restarting the management agent on the host where those VMs are located: http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003490.

[jdptechnc]

wdresen wrote:

Im running version 5.1 with Ent+ licensing. In vCenter Server I have numerous machines that show greyed out and in italics and aldo are listed as (Disconnected). The machines are powered on, respond to ping, and I can RDP to them. Any thoughts as to why they show that way?

Go to the hosts and clusters view, you will probably see a host disconnected as well.  The events for the host/cluster should give you a clue as to what happened.

Make sure the host(s) on which these VM's are running are accessible via the management IP address (can you ping the hostname?  can you console to the host and execute a successful network test?).  If no issues there, just right click the host and reconnect the host.  If you are able to reconnect, all of your VMs will be reconnected as well.  If not, try restarting the managment agent on the host.