vSphere Client and VAMI disconnects intermittently with "This site can't be reached" message on the webpage.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

vSphere Client and vCenter Server Appliance webpage stops working and goes to "This Site can't be reached" intermittently every 2 to 3 minutes. 

Connecting to the vCenter Server via SSH terminates the connection every 2 to 3 minutes. Every time when you try to re-connect the SSH session to the vCenter Server, you see the warning message for accepting the host key fingerprint.

Environment

vCenter Server Appliance

Cause

This is due to an IP address conflict between the vCenter Server Appliance and another Virtual Machine in the same environment.

Similar issue can also be observed if an old instance of the vCenter Server Appliance was accidentally powered on.

Resolution

Resolve the IP address conflict and make sure the vCenter Server Appliance has an unique IP address.

Additional Information

If the DHCP address resolution is pointing to the vCenter Server IP, try to validate the IP address conflict by the following method:

Shutdown down the vCenter Server Appliance.

For a local computer, do a continuous ping to the vCenter Server IP address.

    ping -t <VC-IP-Address>

If we see the response to the ping even after the vCenter Server is shutdown, this means another Physical or a Virtual Machine is using the same IP address. Either someone accidentally powered-on an old instance of the vCenter Server Appliance or the same IP address was manually configured to a Virtual Machine.