ESXi host not responding

[inck]

Hello everyone!

I have several ESXi hosts and one vCenter appliance. All infrastructure working on 6.5 version. All hosts are in DRS cluster with no automatic migration enabled - when it was enabled the situation described below happens more frequently.

There is a huge problem in this environment: host are hardly ever stays in Connected state. Most of the time they are in Not responding state.

In this time all VMs are working properly, I can log in to ESXi SSH shel and to vCenter itself.

i _cannot_ login to:

1. DCUI - it hangs up on password screen
2. WebUI - It either hangs on blank blue screen or it said "Connection to ESXi host timed out"

Every esxcli command is hanging up, also as df -h command.

I cannot restart management services.

If I reboot the system, it goes online and work for some time. but that will happen again.

Sometimes host are flapping and shown as Connected in the vCenter for several minutes.

[Deso1ator]

Not responding hosts is usually a storage related issue. How's the performance of your SAN? Are you running the latest recommended firmware and drivers for your hosts?

[ujjwal2018 · Accepted solution]

Hello,

Plaese check the vobd.log and make sure you are not seeing any vmnic flapping issue or APD issue.

cat /var/log/vobd.log | grep -i vmnic

cat /var/log/vobd.log | grep -i "All Paths Down"

cat /var/log/vmkernel.log | grep -i "All Paths Down"

>>>> Share the output of the above ( if possible )

You can refer the below KB article also -

1. VMware ESX/ESXi 4.x/5.x and 6.x hosts in All-Paths-Down (APD) condition may appear as Not Responding in VMware vCenter Server - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1030980

2. Permanent Device Loss (PDL) and All-Paths-Down (APD) in vSphere 5.x and 6.x - https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2004684 

" Please consider marking this answer "correct" or "helpful" if you think your question have been answered correctly."

Regards,

UJ

[sk84]

I agree with the previous answers. Usually a storage problem is the cause of unresponsive shells and UIs. Maybe there is an APD or PDL event in the logs. Otherwise I would check the IOPS load on the storage.

Best regards,

Sebastian

[inck]

Hello,

Thank you for your answer. I have checked vobd.log and it contains some problems I'll look into. vmkernel.log hasn't.

But here's some "new" facts: I have blocked any network access from vCenter server to ESXi hosts, and now all hosts are 'up' and reachable via WebUI or any other. and all esxcli commands or df -h are executed in normal way. How can it be relevant to this issue?

Thanks.

[rullybikeco]

hi inck,

I'm having the same problem as yours. Could you share your steps to resolve this?

Thank you

Rully