Exiting hung maintenance mode on an ESXi host

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

The host is unable to exit Maintenance Mode as the task is stuck.

Environment

VMware ESXi 7.x

VMware ESXi 8.x

Resolution

Determine if the ESXi host is currently in maintenance mode:

1. Access the ESXi host shell. See Using ESXi Shell in ESXi
2. Run vim-cmd /hostsvc/hostsummary | grep inMaintenanceMode

To exit from a hung maintenance mode, try one of these 4 options:

1. Log into the ESXi host UI as the root user and select exit maintenance mode.
2. Restart the vSphere Web Client (vsphere-client). See Stopping, Starting or Restarting appliance services
3. Exit maintenance mode:
   vim-cmd /hostsvc/maintenance_mode_exit
   
4. Restart the management agents on the host. See Restarting the Management agents on an ESX or ESXi Server (1003490).