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nicsys
Contributor
Contributor

vCenter Server 4 crashed ESX 3.0.1 server

We just installed vCenter Server 4 on a Windows 2008 server and tried to add our 2 ESX 3.0.1 servers to the datacenter. On the first attempt, we got an error:

Cannot install the vCenter agent service. Cannot prepare host for upgrade

Did some forum searches and they seemed to suggest reinstalling the agent was the way to go, so we followed the instructions on this page, under the Reinstalling the agents section:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100371...

Immediately after issuing the command the ESX server starting shutting down all the virtual machines, which was unexpected. We rebooted the ESX server, it came back up normally, then we tried adding it to vCenter again. This time it got to 80%, then gave this error:

Cannot upgrade vCenter agent on esx01 in datastore. Agent not reachable

It also rendered the entire ESX server inoperable, we could not connect to it via VI Client and all the virtual machines became unreachable. The ESX server had to be power cycled.

Any help with this situation would be appreciated. Thank you.

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nicsys
Contributor
Contributor

Can anyone help me connect ESX 3.0.1 servers to vCenter Server 4.0?

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RS_1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Hi,

I had similar issue with ESX 3.0.2, you may first remove the ESX from the vcenter, uninstall the vpxa agent, add the ESX in the vcenter.

FYI, i need to disconnect/reconnect after upgrading a 3.0.2 to 3.5 U4 host in order to make it works well under the vcenter

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nicsys
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the response. I just did a check for the Virtual Center agent using this command:

rpm -qa | grep vpxa

And the result was:

VMware-vpxa-4.0.0-162856

Wouldn't that suggest that 4.0 version was installed? Do you still recommened removing it entirely? I did a check for the agent before all this started and came up with nothing, which should mean there was no previous agent installed. Is there anything I should be aware of so I don't bring this whole machine down unexpectedly again?

Thanks.

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RS_1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

if i where you, i would try Smiley Happy

totally remove from the vcenter helps sometimes.

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nicsys
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks. In case it doesn't show, I'm a VM newbie. So here's my plan, to issue these commands:

rpm -qa | grep vpxa

service mgmt-vmware stop

/etc/init.d/vmware-vpxa stop

rpm -e VMware-vpxa-4.0.0-162856

service mgmt-vmware start

Then try re-adding the ESX server to vCenter. Is there any reason to suspect anything above will take the machine down like the first time?

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RS_1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

none

BTW, you forgot to remove the host from vcenter in your process Smiley Happy

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nicsys
Contributor
Contributor

Using the described procedure I was able to connect our two 3.0.1 ESX servers to vCenter 4. For some reason I had to run through the procedure multiple times on one server before it finally worked, and for some reason it decided to power down a few of the VMs, but it was ultimately successful, which is all that matters now.

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RS_1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Cool !

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