vCenter keeps dropping ESXi 4.1 host

[treost]

When I access the host thru vCenter server, it only keeps the connection for about a minute. then it drops the connection saying "host not responding". then i right-click, re-connect the host but it would drop the connection again in about a minute. did a lot of troubleshooting but no luck so far. checked the kb article 1003409 and followed most of the steps except 9 and 7. not sure how to do that. also when i log into the shell "service" commands don't work. I am running the following versions.

vSphere Client 4.1.0.258902

vCenter Server 4.1.0.258902

ESXi 4.1.0.260247

vCenter server is set up as a virtual server. (Server OS Windows 2003 R2 Enterprise x64) Please let me know if you have any insights into this issue.

Thanks,

Tharaka

[Troy_Clavell]

have a look at the below article, maybe it will help.  You have your hosts added with FQDN, and there is proper name resolution setup in your environment.

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1011647

[treost]

that's another kb i checked. FQDNs are all setup correcty. they ping one another just fine. i manually added the host FQDN to the DNS server and then i added the vCenter FQDN to hosts file in the host server. still it's doing that.

thanks,

tharaka

[logiboy123]

I would check your networking.

kb.vmware.com/kb/1012382

You need ports 902, 903, 5989 UDP & TCP from vCenter to ESX and from ESX to vCenter. It sounds like your Heartbeat is failing, this is done on port 902 UDP. I would also check your firewall settings on vCenter.

[treost]

how do you check to see what ports are opened from ESXi to vCenter?

thanks!

[logiboy123]

Talk to the guy who does networking in your environment.

[treost]

I just disabled the firewall on the vCenter Server and it fixed the problem. So,  you are right, logiboy123, it was a firewall issue. I can now go back and enable the firewall and then open the ports necessary for ESXi host. BTW, I am the network guy but I am new to managing ESXi host. I tried to use netstat on ESXi shell, but it says command not found. So, that's where i got stuck.

Thanks for your help! Happy Holidays!

-Tharaka

[logiboy123 · Accepted solution]

Don't be shy about assigning those points my friend! 😃

[TheBadMan82]

Hi,

I'm having the same problem.  I was sure to go through all the KBs listed in this post.

The FireWall on my vCenter Server 4.1 VM is disabled (Windows Server 2008R2 64bit).

3 ESXi 4.1 hosts reside in the same datacenter separated from the vCenter server by a Netscreen FW.  These hosts do not have any issues.

1 ESXi 4.1 host resides in a different datacenter and is separated by the same FW.  All hosts are in the same policy so they all have access to the same ports.

Again, 3 hosts are good, but this one remote server is having a problem.  The only difference I can see is the avg.24ms of latency.

Please let me know if I should re-post this under a new topic to get more attention.

--

Dave