ESXi 5.5 Update 3b and later hosts are not manageable after an upgrade

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

If ESXi hosts are not manageable after upgrading to version 5.5 Update 3b and later, upgrade vCenter Server to 5.5 Update 3b or later.

Symptoms:

• After upgrading an ESXi host to version 5.5 Update 3b or later, the ESXi host in vCenter Server appears as Disconnected or Not responding
• When attempting to add or reconnect an ESXi host to vCenter Server, you see one of these errors:

• Cannot contact the specific host. The host may not be available on the network, a network configuration problem may exist, or the management services on this host may not be responding.
• Call "Datacenter.QueryConnectionInfo" for object "" on vCenter Server "" failed
• The host returns esxupdate error code:15. The package manager transaction is not successful. Check the Update Manager log files and esxupdate log files for more details.
  
  Note: For additional symptom and log entries, see the Additional Information section.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x

Cause

Starting with vCenter Server 5.5, the SSLv3 protocol is disabled by default. When the SSLv3 protocol is disabled, the version of ESXi host and vCenter Server must be compatible.

Note: VMware does not recommend enabling SSLv3 in VMware products.

For more information on compatible versions, see the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixes.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, upgrade vCenter Server to 5.5 Update 3b or later, available at VMware Downloads.

To work around this issue if you do not want to upgrade, downgrade the ESXi host to a previous version.

Additional Information

You experience the additional symptoms:

• If you revert the ESXi host to previous version, you are able to connect to and manage the host from vCenter Server.
• Connecting to the host directly through the vSphere Client is successful.

Reverting to a previous version of ESXi
Update sequence for vSphere 5.5 and its compatible VMware products
Configuring SSLv3 protocol on vSphere 5.x
ESXi 5.5 Update 3b およびそれ以降のホストがアップグレード後に管理できなくなる
升级后无法再管理 ESXi 5.5 更新 3 以及后来的主机
ESXi-Hosts können nach einem Upgrade nicht mehr verwaltet werden