Determining why a single virtual machine is inaccessible on an ESXi host or vCenter Server system

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

This article provides troubleshooting steps to help determine why a virtual machine appears unresponsive.

Symptoms:

• Clients connected to services running in a virtual machine are no longer accessible.
• Applications dependent on services running in a virtual machine are reporting errors.
• A virtual machine no longer responds to network connections.
• A virtual machine no longer responds to user interaction at the console.

Environment

VMware ESXi 6.x
VMware ESXi 7.x

Resolution

Validate that each troubleshooting step below is true for your environment. The steps will provide instructions or a link to a document, for validating the step and taking corrective action as necessary. The steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and identify the proper resolution. Please do not skip a step.

 

To determine why a virtual machine is unresponsive:

1. Determine if there are multiple virtual machines experiencing these symptoms.
2. Determine if the virtual machine is currently powered off:

   1. Open the vSphere Client and connect to the vCenter Server.
   2. Provide administrative credentials when prompted.
   3. Ensure that you are in the Hosts & Clusters view.
   4. Select the virtual machine that is currently exhibiting the symptoms in the Inventory.
   5. Click the Summary tab.
   6. In the General dialog, confirm that the State: shows as Powered Off. If so, see Determining why a virtual machine was powered off or restarted (1019064).
       
3. Determine if there are any tasks that are currently running that may affect the virtual machine. Open the vSphere Client and look for the Recent Tasks pane at the bottom of the client screen. If you do not see the Recent Tasks pane, click View and ensure that Status Bar is selected. You may also notice that certain options are grayed out for managing the virtual machine. If a task on a virtual machine is in progress, depending on circumstances, it may have an adverse effect on your virtual machine.
   
   The task and percentage may provide details on the progress of the operation. The additional information section of this article includes a list of tasks that are known to cause a virtual machine to appear unresponsive. If your virtual machine is in this state, you may also want to search for the task and the percentage within the knowledge base. If the error has not been documented within the knowledge base, submit a support request. For more information, see How to submit a support request.
    
4. Verify the functionality of the virtual machine's remote console:

   1. Open the vSphere Client and connect to the vCenter Server.
   2. Provide administrative credentials when prompted.
   3. Ensure that you are in the Hosts & Clusters view.
   4. Select the virtual machine that is currently exhibiting the symptoms in the Inventory.
   5. Click the Console tab:
      • If the guest operating system displays a kernel based error such as a blue screen or a kernel panic, see Identifying critical Guest OS failures within virtual machines.
      • If the virtual machine remote console does not respond to user interaction via mouse or keyboard, see Troubleshooting a virtual machine that has stopped responding (VM hang/freeze).
         
5. Verify that the virtual machine responds to network traffic or ping requests:
   
   Note: For more information on how to use the ping command, see Testing network connectivity with the Ping command (1003486). Other tools such as SSH for linux based machines or Remote Desktop for Microsoft Windows based machines can also be used to test the functionality of the host.
    

   1. Open a console from your current desktop.
   2. Ping the virtual machine using the IP address.
   3. Ping the virtual machine using the DNS address.
   4. Optionally, attempt to connect to the virtual machine through a remote connection such as RDP or SSH.
   5. Repeat steps 1 and 2 from the console of the user who is reporting the issue.
   6. If any of the ping tests fail, see Troubleshooting virtual machine network connection issues (1003893).
       
6. Determine if the virtual machine has been recently rebooted:
   1. Open the vSphere Client and connect to the vCenter Server.
   2. Provide administrative credentials when prompted.
   3. Ensure that you are in the Hosts & Clusters view.
   4. Select the virtual machine that is currently exhibiting the symptoms in the Inventory.
   5. Click the Console tab.
   6. Log into your guest operating system using administrative credentials.
   7. Determine the uptime of your guest operating system.
      • For Linux based operating systems, the command uptime displays the current uptime.
      • Note: The preceding link was correct as of July 26, 2012. If you find the link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.
         
   8. If your virtual machine was off or has rebooted abruptly, see Determining why a virtual machine was powered off or restarted (1019064).

For additional troubleshooting steps for a non responding virtual machine, see Troubleshooting a virtual machine that has stopped responding (1007819).

Note: If your problem still exists after trying the steps in this article:

• File a support request with VMware Support and note this KB article ID in the problem description. For more information, see How to submit a support request.
• Gather VMware Support Script Data.

Additional Information

For related information, see these articles about tasks that may cause a virtual machine to stop responding at the console:

• A snapshot removal can hang a virtual machine for a long time (1002836)
• Ensuring a virtual machine is not inaccessible due to a VMware VirtualCenter issue (1007808)
• Troubleshooting a virtual machine that has stopped responding