Restarting Management Agents

[MariusRoma]

I was requested to restart the Management Agents on an ESXi 5.0 host managed by a vCenter server 5.5.

The action is described on page VMware KB: Restarting the Management agents on an ESXi or ESX host

Can I restart the Management Agents without creating problems to the running VM?

• If I restart the Management agents will running VMs go on running?
• Will users accessing the VMs thru the network go on using them?
• Will users accessing the VM consoles thru the vSphere client go on using the VMs?

Regards

marius

[Anjani_Kumar · Accepted solution]

• If I restart the Management agents will running VMs go on running?

          : Yeah. no impact on running vms.

• Will users accessing the VMs thru the network go on using them?

         : Yes . no impact on it.

• Will users accessing the VM consoles thru the vSphere client go on using the VMs?

          :Yes.

Overall no impact on the vms running on it. only tasks like (vmotion of the vms will stop, and other ongoing tasks which are visible in to the task windows will stop for a while until HM service restart)

[BenLiebowitz]

Keep in mind, if you login to the console, there is also RESTART MANAGEMENT NETWORK, which is different from restarting the agents and may result in a brief network hiccup for the VMs. 

[elihuj]

Also remember that the host will disconnect/reconnect from vCenter. There is no cause for concern on this.

[SavkoorSuhas]

None of your VMs will be affected. Your production environment will be up and running. The only thing is the host will disconnect and reconnect during this period.

[MartinE11]

Not like to open a separate thread  for this because it just extends this question.

Is it also save to restart mgmt agents, if HA is enabled and Host Isolation Response is set to "shutdown"?

I ask this because in my opinion if I restart the agents, the mgmt network is not accessible for a short time. My latest information regarding this is, that the default host isolation address is the default gateway of the mgmt network.

So would this command not lead to an unwanted failover in this scenario?

Another question:

Is it save to restart all MGMT agents with "services.sh restart" or just "vpxa restart" and "hostd restart" ?

[amirsafayan]

Hi Ben,

I'm trying to understand what exactly is the impact to VMs when you select "Restart Management Network"?

Thanks,

Amir