ESXi host going on and offline

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• ESXi host is intermittently going on and offline.
• In the UI under events, you can see the host is not responding message.
• In vCenter - /var/log/vmware/vpxd/vpxd.log you can see the following messages.

  warning vpxd host-#### Failed to resolve address; ####.####.####:443; Host not found (Authoritative)

• Running cat /etc/hosts will show the registered name of the host, in this case, the differences are between the host name and registered name.

Environment

• VMware vSphere 8.x
• VMware vSphere 7.x

Cause

Incorrect registered name of the host.

Resolution

1. Power off all VMs residing on the affected host.
2. Place the host into maintenance mode.
3. Connect to the affected host via Putty session.
4. Type: DCUI
5. Click F2
6. Provide password
7. Configure Management Network
8. DNS Configuration ---> and change the name
9. Restart ESXi host

Additional Information

For more information about configuring DNS, refer to 

Configuring VMware ESXi Management Network from the direct console