I am acknowledging that I know vCenter 6.0 is way out of date, due to non-technical issues we are over 6 months from being able to start the move to 7.0 for this environment.
So, we have a vCenter 6.0 (ver 6.0.0 2776510) appliance running, hosting 14 hosts and 60 VMs, has been fairly solid over the years. We just started having an issue with a single ESXi Host (ver 6.0.0 3620759) on a HPE DL360 G9, all the other servers are the same generation of HPE and same ESXi version. The infrastructure does not use DNS so the vCenter and Hosts are connected by IP only
Recently the host in question started showing as disconnected with the wrong IP showing in vCenter. We removed it and reconnected with the correct IP, it connects, shows the correct info and then suddenly the name/IP of the host changes back to the incorrect one. The Events tab for the Datacenter view shows the host being connected and such then "IP address changed from x.x.x.x to y.y.y.y". This is clearly happening on the vcenter side but I cannot find what is causing this nor can I find any matching google search results.
Does anyone have any ideas?
Point of clarification, the actual IP on the ESXi host does not change, in vCenter I add it as IP x.x.x.x and then the vcetner says it is changing it to IP y.y.y.y and then loses connectivity as it is no longer trying to connect to the correct IP. At all times during this, I can be connected directly to the impacted ESXi host and never lose connectivity. It is purely on the vCenter that it is 'changing' the IP.
Did not have the opportunity to dig through logs due to some major issues on another system, hopefully today will be calmer
So the IP on the host stays as it should be and you can ping it and access it via the correct IP, is that right?
Correct
I have not come across something like this. Please have a look into the logs as mentioned before, eventually, if you have support, rise SR.
Let us know what is in the logs.
Good luck
So far nada in the logs other than it 'changed' the IP. I cannot find what is triggering this. At this point am thinking of forgetting this and just waiting until we upgrade this environment.
I believe some configuration conflict somewhere. I think we have 2 options
1. May you have duplicate ip in network with any one device, change another ip and check it
2. Might be configuration file issues. you can reset ESXI to factory default and reconfigure it.
in last pls share log bundle i can try to find out if any clue there.
Already confirmed its not a dupe IP as I was able to power off the Host for a bit and also the ARP table shows nothing extra either. Resetting the ESXi may be an option but will have to wait until after VMWare Explore to go that path.
but why reset ESXi if ESXi has a correct IP address and only vCenter things it should be different and default to different IP. Am I missing something?
While at Explore I talked to one of the VMWare experts and was given some ideas to check on in the vCenter DB (make some changes) and will be trying, the explaination made sense. Will reply back with details and how it went later today
It is very interesting. How the change in DB is triggered, and by what event? Please let us know.
So, on the VCSA the Postgres DB has a Table VPX_Parameter and an entry called VirtualCenter.AutoManagedIPV4 which is populated with this incorrect IP. Also a table VPX_Host has entry management_IP. The advice was to change it to the correct value but I am unable to find the VPX_Host table at this time, figuring I am fat fingering things, but am on a good direction now.
I will take note of it, as it is very interesting. Thanks for sharing @jhammer2000
