vCenter 5.1 performance tab "no data available"

[crawf10]

Hi All

I have a problem with the peformance tab not showing any data for VMs & hosts. I have done a fair bit of searching on this problem and not found an answer yet. My thoughts is that its a vCenter database problem because when I login directly to an ESXi host I can get the performance stats from the tab in question.

I have recently upgraded our three ESXi hosts from 5.0 to 5.1 build 838463 and created an new copy of vCenter 5.1 and connected the hosts to the new copy of vCenter. As far as I know the performace stats were working on 5.0 and looks like they have stopped working after the upgrade. I upgraded the hosts using update manager and installed the ISO image from Dell that included the VIB for hardware monitoring.

Environment:

3x Dell R710, 128GB RAM each

ESXi 5.1 Build 838463 Enterprise Plus

vCenter 5.1 build 880146 Standard

Please let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions, I have attached a screenshot of the graphs showing no data.

Regards,

Andrew

[crawf10]

After doing more checking and testing it looks like peformance stats are working on one of the ESXi hosts and not on the remaining two. All VMs on the host that does report stats also report stats. All VMs on hosts that don't report stats also don't report stats. This leads me to believe that its not vCenter or the database but rather a setting on the upgraded hosts.

Regards,

Andrew

[crawf10]

Another update:

I have rebooted the vCenter server a number of times and checked that all services are running. I have also checked the time is correct and made sure they are updating via NTP.

Regards,

Andrew

[crawf10]

OK, after a little testing I have found the answer and hope this helps someone else that can't find the issue:

I logged into the console of the ESXi server and then selected 'Troubleshooting Options' and then 'Restart Management Agents'.

This basically kills the connection to vCenter and anything else monitoring the server. Probably a good idea to turn off HA when doing this so that the cluster doesn't try and restart the VMs that are on that host on the remaining ESXi hosts

Regards,

Andrew

[gregb_ka6max]

Andrew,

Thank you for sharing your solution to the issue of no performance data being displayed after a host upgrade from VMware ESXi 5.0 to 5.1.  Your method of going to the console of the VMware host and selecting Troubleshooting Options and restarting the management agents worked immediately for me.

I hope you get what you want for Christmas, because your solution was my "present" for this year! :smileygrin:

Have a good one,

Greg

[crawf10]

Glad you got it sorted Greg, hope you have a great Christmas to!

Regards,

Andrew

[Chriss745]

You can achieve the same if you select your ESX(i) host in vCenter which doesn't report correctly performance and go to the Configuration tab -> Security Profile -> Services -> Properties and restart service: vpxa

Hope that helps.

Regards,

Chris

EMC

[cssavard]

Thanks for posting your solution, I can confirm that it worked for me as well !

[Crmsonknight]

This worked for me as well!!! Great Find!  Thank You!

[PatricioGB]

Excellent solution, I worked perfectly.

Regards,

Patricio

[Geoff_l]

Confirmed...it is a solution!

[AlphaDawg]

Thanks Chris...

Worked Great!

[Rick88]

Aren't we missing the issue here? Why are hosts losing their performance stats and need to have the service restarted? This causes havoc with DRS. I have hosts that were not upgraded but installed from scratch on 5.1 and every once in a while I notice that no performace stats are being displayed for the host. I have gotten into the habit of checking this on a weekly basis and restarting the service to solve the problem (or disconnecting and reconnecting the host). Is there something I am missing? Why does this seem to be happening. I guess I am not the only one experiencing this based on this thread.

RickH

[crawf10]

Hi RickH

I have only had this problem a couple times, it sounds like you might need to open a support case with VMware to get this looked at. Have you upgraded to the latest build, I think its currently 5.1 1021289.

Regards,

Andrew

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[Gabrie1]

Rick88 wrote:

Aren't we missing the issue here? Why are hosts losing their performance stats and need to have the service restarted? This causes havoc with DRS. I have hosts that were not upgraded but installed from scratch on 5.1 and every once in a while I notice that no performace stats are being displayed for the host. I have gotten into the habit of checking this on a weekly basis and restarting the service to solve the problem (or disconnecting and reconnecting the host). Is there something I am missing? Why does this seem to be happening. I guess I am not the only one experiencing this based on this thread.

RickH

Same here, restarting the agents does solve it, but the issue keeps coming back. Currently the host is on 5.1.0 build 914609.

[RolandBasel]

Thank you, this resolved it.

[dryang]

Rick88 wrote:

Aren't we missing the issue here? Why are hosts losing their performance stats and need to have the service restarted? This causes havoc with DRS. I have hosts that were not upgraded but installed from scratch on 5.1 and every once in a while I notice that no performace stats are being displayed for the host. I have gotten into the habit of checking this on a weekly basis and restarting the service to solve the problem (or disconnecting and reconnecting the host). Is there something I am missing? Why does this seem to be happening. I guess I am not the only one experiencing this based on this thread.

RickH

My thoughts exactly. This issue been there for years. In my case it may randomly occur with one of 5 ESXs in a cluster. Very annoying.

[WTFSTFU]

Hi All

Apologies for posting in an old thread however just wanted to ask, what effect will this have on running VMs on affected hosts?

[Brendos]

HI all,

Came across this thread after we saw the same symptoms in our environment.  The best KB article match I have been is linked below.  Seems to be a known issue in vCenter, and the resolution is to disconnect/reconnect the host.

VMware KB: A DRS cluster on vCenter Server 4.x and 5.x shows the warning: Load imbalanced

Hope this helps.