ESX Host is not responding. Stuck entering into maintenance mode.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• ESX hostd process and Host client is degraded.
  
  
• ESX Host is not responding in the vCenter vSphere Client Cluster.
  
  
• ESX Host stuck entering maintenance mode.
  
  
• All Paths Down (APD) observed in /var/log/vobd.log.
  
  
• ESX Host was not rebooted after the APD condition was resolved.

Environment

vSphere ESX

Cause

• Due to the nature of an APD situation, there is no clean way to recover. The APD situation needs to be resolved at the storage array/fabric layer to restore connectivity to the host.
  
  
• All affected ESXi hosts may require a reboot to remove any residual references to the affected devices that are in an APD state.
  
  
• Performing a vMotion migration of unaffected virtual machines is not possible, as the management agents may be affected by the APD condition, and the ESXi host may become unmanaged.

As a result, a reboot of an affected ESXi host forces an outage to all non-affected virtual machines on that host.

Resolution

Reboot all hosts that had an APD event.

Additional Information

• Permanent Device Loss (PDL) and All-Paths-Down (APD) on host
  
  
• ESXi hosts in All Paths Down (APD) condition may appear as Not Responding in vCenter Server