ESX 5.5 Host Disconnects 60 seconds after adding to vCenter.
Today I’ve been creating a new network for our ESX Hosts and encountered this error.
I could add the host to vCenter but after a minute it would come up “disconnected” I could still access the host directly via web browser, sphere console and the TTY console I could also ping from the vCenter server, but I’d lost off the management via vCenter.
Spending sometime looking through the logs and with the use of Google I found that it was as heartbeat issue. The vCenter wasn’t receiving the heartbeats and marks the host as disconnected.
To resolve this, I first needed confirm if our vCenter heartbeat was using the default port or it had been changed. Here’s how you do it –
There are two places you should check.
The vCenter Server – Check the following registry location –
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware VirtualCenter
Check the “heartbeatPort” value, for me it was 902.
The ESX Host
Check the following vpxa.cfg file
grep -i serverport /etc/vmware/vpxa/vpxa.cfg
This will return the following
~ # grep -i serverport /etc/vmware/vpxa/vpxa.cfg
<serverPort>902</serverPort>
As you can see my vCenter and ESX host were using the same port, so this leads to a network connectivity issue, next step is to check the to make sure the following ports are allowed through your firewall/switching and also through the ESX firewall.
- 902 – UDP & TCP
- 443 – TCP
To check the ESX host you’ve got two options, you can connect via SSH and edit the rules or like me you connect directly to the host with the vSphere console and allow it through there.
Here’s a VMWare Support document that will help you – KB2040630