Hostd service continually crashes on ESXi host

Products

• VMware

Issue/Introduction

• Cannot connect ESXI to vCenter server, the host continues to disconnect and reconnect
• ESXi host client is not available
• Hostd service crashes a few seconds after manual start
• In vobd.log there may be:

[YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS] Hostd[###]: [Originator@### sub=Vimsvc.ha-eventmgr] Event 128 : /bin/hostd crashed (17 time(s) so far) and a core file might have been created at /var/core/hostd-zdump.000. This might have caused connections to the host to be dropped.

• The issue persist after rebooting the host
• One or more Virtual Machines cannot be registered on other hosts

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 9.x

Cause

Possibly incorrect or missing entries in the .vmx file for the guest VMs that cannot be registered on another hosts.

Resolution

Workaround:

Remove the suspected VM from the inventory file.

1. SSH to host, navigate to /etc/vmware/hostd/
2. Back up the file vmInventory.xml:  

cp vmInventory.xml vmInventory.xml.bak

     3. Use vi to remove the entire line for the VM: 
<vmxCfgPath>/vmfs/volumes/Datastore-UUID/VM_name/VM_name.vmx</vmxCfgPath>

     4. Restart hostd:
/etc/init.d/hostd restart