esxi

How to restart management agents on ESX or ESXi host

Posted on February 13, 2017 by Linux VMware

If you are not unable to connect ESXi server to vCenter, or when you cannot connect to ESXi server from VI client it may be necessary to restart the management agents on ESX or ESXi host.

To restart the management agents on ESXi 6.x

This applies to ESX4/5.x/6.x

For the restart of the management agents (mgmt-vmware and vmware-vpxa) do the following:

Log in to SSH or Local console as root.
Run these commands:

Or also (alternative way)
To reset the management network on a specific VMkernel interface, by default vmk0, run the command:

Note: Using a semicolon (;) between the two commands ensures the VMkernel interface is disabled and then re-enabled in succession. If the management interface is not running on vmk0, change the above command according to the VMkernel interface used.

to restart all management agents on the host, run the command:

To restart the Management agents on ESXi Server – via the console:

1.) Connect to the console of your ESX Server and press F2
2.) Login as root and when using the Up/Down arrows navigate to Restart Management Agents.
3.) Press Enter and press F11 to restart the services.
4.) When the service has been restarted, press Enter. Then you can press Esc to logout of the system.

Screen should be similar to:

To restart the management agents on ESXi 4.x and 5.x:

From Local Console or SSH:
  1. Log in to SSH or Local console as root.
  2. Run this command:
You can also check:  Service mgmt-vmware restart may not restart hostd (1005566).

To restart the management agents on ESX Server 3.x, ESX 4.x:

  1. Login to your ESX Server as root from SSH session or directly from the console.
  2. Type service mgmt-vmware restart and press Enter
    Make sure that automatic Startup/Shutdown of virtual machines is disabled before running this command otherwise you might reboot the virtual machines. See more at 103312
  3. Type service vmware-vpxa restart and press Enter.
  4. Type logout and press Enter to disconnect from the ESX Server.

Successful output :

This may also server as a solution for the error “Unable to access file since it is locked. An error occurred while consolidating disks: One or more disks are busy.”

ESXi 6.0 not detecting BROCADE HBA adapter

Posted on June 9, 2016 by VMware

Steps:

  1. Make sure HBA is connected on the PCI slot and visible under esx hardware list:
  2. Check if VMKernel can detect any storage via Fibre Channel
    (output will be blank line if HBA driver is missing but HBA appears to be in PCI card determined from step 1)
  3. Search and download the relevant ESXi drivers for HBAthe recommended driver (bfa) version for 82B in ESXi 5.1 is 3.0.0.0
    You can download it from the following URL.
    https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/details?downloadGroup=DT-ESXi50-BROCADE-bfa-3000&productId=229
  4. Download the driver and install it using following instructions:

New Installation

For new installs, you should perform the following steps:

  1. Copy the VIB to the ESX server.  Technically, you can place the file anywhere that is accessible to the ESX console shell, but for these instructions, we’ll assume the location is in ‘/tmp’. Here’s an example of using the Linux ‘scp’ utility to copy the file from a local system to an ESX server located at 10.10.10.10:
  2. Issue the following command (full path to the VIB must be specified):

In the example above, this would be:

Note: Depending on the certificate used to sign the VIB, you may need to change the host acceptance level.  To do this, use the following command:

Also, depending on the type of VIB being installed, you may have to put ESX into maintenance mode.  This can be done through the VI Client, or by adding the ‘–maintenance-mode’ option to the above esxcli command.

Upgrade Installation

The upgrade process is similar to a new install, except the command that should be issued is the following:

Reboot host.

Now you should have the HBA should the datastores.

Remove licensing from ESXi host

Posted on June 8, 2016 by VMware Windows

WARNING: This is for education/informational testing/development purposes only, and should not be used on a production server.

WARNING: This trick will only work with an ESX(i) stand alone server.  It will not work if the ESX(i) server is connected to a vCenter Server, as the vCenter Server knows better than to let you do this.  (you can always remove and readd the ESX(i) server to vCenter.)

To reset your ESX 4.x, ESXi 4.x and ESXi 5.x 60 day evaluation license:

  1. Login to the TSM through SSH or Shell
  2. Remove the following two files:
  3. Reboot server

If your ESX server is connected to a vCenter server, please remove the ESX server first.  Once the steps above are completed, you can add it back to the vCenter server.

Command to remove the license and reboot the ESX host:

After reboot, logging on the ESXi server, you should be greeted with this message.

60-day-evaluation

For ESXi 5.1 and ESXi 5.5, you may need to continually remove the license files as the server reboots for this to work.  The following should do this quite nicely:

An alternative would be restarting the services, it should work just as well as rebooting the server:

For vCenter
1) Create a DSN to your local SQL Express instance that holds your vCenter DB.
2) Uninstall virtual center
3) Re-install virtual center and point to your DSN making sure not to overwrite.

With this method, I have been able to refresh my 4.1 and 5.0 hosts.  Have not confirmed if this works for 5.1.

Mo Wasay
My name is Mo Wasay. I work with a variety of technologies and engage with the community and customers around the world. I am located in Dallas, Texas, U.S.A. I like to share my knowledge and experiences and help others who come across similar situations. My current focus is Microsoft Azure, Azure Stack and Windows Server.
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