vCenter down on ESX host, unable to bring down hard to boot back up.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• vCenter is not responding on host, unable to power down or restart vCenter.
  
  
• Unable to vmotion vCenter to another host.
  
  
• Some virtual machines on the same host are not responding.
  
  
• Unable to reset the ESX host to trigger an HA event.

Environment

vSphere ESX 8.x

Cause

• Host is not responding to virtual machine power-off or reset actions. Unable to reset the host.
  
  
• Network driver and firmware are not matched, causing host instability with storage.

Resolution

• Use KVM (iLO, iDRAC etc) and DCUI to reboot the ESX host.

Reboot of the host will rigger an HA event (requires HA to have been enabled on the cluster) to restart the virtual machines on another ESX host in the HA cluster.

• Work with the hardware vendor to update the network driver and firmware.

Additional Information

• Access the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) of an ESXi host.
  
  
• Determining Network/Storage firmware and driver version in ESXi.