Exiting hung maintenance mode on an ESX/ESXi host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This articles describes the procedure to exit a hung maintenance mode from VMware Infrastructure/vSphere Client or from the command line on the console of an ESX/ESXi host.

If the ESX/ESXi host cannot enter maintenance mode, see ESX/ESXi host fails to go into maintenance mode (1036167).

Environment

• VMware ESX 4.0.x
• VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
• VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
• VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
• VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
• VMware ESX Server 3.5.x
• VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
• VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
• VMware ESX 4.1.x
• VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable

Resolution

To determine if the ESX/ESXi host is currently in maintenance mode:

1. Open a console to the ESX or ESXi host.
   
   
2. Run one of these commands:
   
   ESXi: # vim-cmd /hostsvc/hostsummary | grep inMaintenanceMode
ESX: # vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/hostsummary | grep inMaintenanceMode

To exit from a hung maintenance mode, try one of these options:

• Disconnect the vSphere Client (by closing it) and reconnect to the ESX host to see if the option to exit maintenance mode appears. If this works, there was a problem refreshing the information known to the vSphere Client.

• Exit maintenance mode using the vimsh or vim-cmd command.
  
  
• Open a console to the ESX or ESXi host.
  
  Run one of these commands:
  
  ESXi: # vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
ESX: # vimsh -n -e /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
  
  

• Restart the management agents on the host. For more information, see Restarting the Management agents on an ESX or ESXi Server (1003490).

• Check the log file at /var/log/vmware/hostd.log to determine if the hostd management agent is experiencing an issue connecting to the vmware-authd service. For more information, see Location of log files for VMware products (1021806).
  
  
• Open a console to the ESX or ESXi host. 
  
  
• Review the /var/log/vmware/hostd log files for messages similar to:
  
  [VpxVmdbCnx] Authd error: 514 Error connecting to hostd-vmdb service instance.
[VpxVmdbCnx] Failed to connect to host :902. Check that authd is running correctly (lib/connect error 11)


• Restart the vmware-authd and xinetd services using the commands:
  
  # chkconfig vmware-authd off
# service xinetd restart
# chkconfig --level 3 vmware-authd on
# service xinetd restart