Restarting Management Agents in ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Procedure to restart the management agents on an ESXi host.

Warning:

• Do not use the services.sh restart command on ESXi hosts running vSAN
• Do not use the services.sh restart command if LACP is in use
• Do not use the services.sh restart command if NSX is configured in the environment
• Do not use the services.sh restart command if using shared graphics in a View environment (VGPU, vDGA, vSGA)

Restarting the host management agents may impact currently running tasks, including impacting performance on the guest virtual machines of that host.

Environment

• VMware ESXi Server 7.x.
• VMware ESXi Server 8.x.
• VMware ESXi Server 9.x.

Resolution

Restart Management agents in ESXi Using Direct Console User Interface (DCUI):

1. Connect to the console of the ESXi host
2. Press F2 <Customize System/View Logs>
3. Log in as root
4. Navigate to Troubleshooting Options > Restart Management Agents. Press Enter
5. Press F11 to restart services
6. When the service restarts, press Enter
7. Press Esc to log out

Restart management agents in ESXi using the Host Client:

1. In the ESXi Host Client, select Host > Manage > Services and select the service to restart

Restart management agents in ESXi Using ESXi Shell or Secure Shell (SSH):

1. Log in to ESXi Shell or SSH as root
2. Run:
   

   /etc/init.d/hostd restart
   /etc/init.d/vpxa restart

Restart all services on the host:

Caution: Do not run this command if NSX is configured in the environment.

1. Log in to ESXi Shell or SSH as root
2. Run:
   

   services.sh restart

Additional Information

Run this command to verify NSX for vSphere is installed on an ESXi host:
  

esxcli software vib list | grep -E 'nsx|vsipfwlib'