Host connection and power state vmware ошибка

“Host connection and power state” alarm is raised for a host which heartbeat packets do not reach vCenter Server. This is normal behavior. After restarting vpxd, the host state is recovered to Green though the heartbeat packets from the host still do not reach vCenter Server.

How do I troubleshoot ESXi host issues?

1. Verify if the ESXi host is powered on by checking logs.
2. Reconnect a disconnected host.
3. Check connectivity via FQDN and IP address.
4. Verify port 902.
5. Try restarting ESXi management agents.
6. Troubleshoot the VPXA agent.
7. Check underlying storage issues.
8. Final words.

What is VMware alarm?

In vSphere, alarms are notifications that occur in response to certain events or conditions that occur with an object in vCenter Server. It is possible to create alarms for vCenter Server objects such as VMs, ESXi hosts, networks, and datastores.

How do I fix my uplink redundancy lost?

Check which switch has lost uplink redundancy on the host. Connect at least one more physical NIC on the host to this switch and reset the alarm to green. You can use the vSphere Web Client or the ESXi Shell. If a physical NIC is down, try to bring it back up by using the ESXi Shell on the host.

Can not synchronize host?

To resolve this issue, resynchronize the password with the vCenter Server database. To resynchronize the password with the vCenter Server database: Right-click the ESXi host and click Disconnect. Reconnect the host and enter the root password when prompted.

How do I restart my ESXi host agent?

Restart Management agents in ESXi Using Direct Console User Interface (DCUI):

1. Connect to the console of your ESXi host.
2. Press F2 to customize the system.
3. Log in as root.
4. Use the Up/Down arrows to navigate to Troubleshooting Options > Restart Management Agents.
5. Press Enter.
6. Press F11 to restart the services.

How do you create a VMware alarm?

Procedure

1. Create or edit alarms in the Monitor tab. Select an inventory object, click the Monitor tab, and click Issues. Click Alarm Definitions.
2. Add an alarm to an object in the object navigator. Right-click an inventory object and select Alarms > New Alarm Definition.

What are alarms in virtualization?

An alarm monitors the type of inventory objects specified in its definition. For example, you might want to monitor the CPU usage of all virtual machines in a specific host cluster. You can select the cluster in the inventory, and add a virtual machine alarm to it.

What is VPXD service?

VPXD stands for Virtual Provisioning X Daemon. Virtual Provisioning X was the original name of the vCenter Server product. VPXD is the main service for running vCenter Server.

What is host D in VMware?

The vmware-hostd management service is the main communication channel between ESX/ESXi hosts and VMkernel. If vmware-hostd fails, ESX/ESXi hosts disconnects from vCenter Server/VirtualCenter and cannot be managed, even if you try to connect to the ESX/ESXi host directly. When this happens, you see these errors.

What are stateless alarms in a host monitor?

Stateless alarms are indicated by an asterisk next to their name. Table 1. Monitors the power state of the host and whether the host is reachable. Monitors host CPU usage. Monitors host memory usage. Monitors virtual machine CPU usage. Monitors virtual machine memory usage. Monitors datastore disk usage.

What are the host connection state and host power state conditions?

The two conditions for this alarm, Host Connection State and Host Power State, are checked simultaneously. After the host receives the command to wake up from standby mode, both conditions can become true for a brief time.

How often do host connection alarms change from green to red?

Host connection state alarms change from green to red frequently (for example, daily). ESXi/ESX hosts go into a state of Not Responding in vCenter Server then respond again after a few seconds.

Why does the alarm status change from standby to powered on?

When the power state information changes from Standby to Powered on, the host may not respond to the vCenter Server heartbeats for a short period of time. As the transition from one state to the other occurs very quickly (usually in less than second), the alarm status immediately changes back to Green.

One of the issues that can occur when managing VMware Hosts through vCenter is to experience random or intermittent VMware Host disconnects from the vCenter Server. This behaviour happens when the vSphere ESXi Hosts are not sending a message back to the vCenter. These are the heartbeat messages. If the VMware vCenter does not receive them at all or does not even receive them in a specific polling time then the vCenter Server assumes these particular VMware Hosts are down or not reachable.

These heartbeat messages are coming on a format of UDP packets from the VMware Hosts to the vCenter Server on port 902. By default the VMware ESXi Hosts send heartbeat messages every 10 seconds. In particular the vCenter has a time window of 60 seconds as a sort of polling time. Should heartbeat messages not received within these 60 seconds the vCenter triggers an alarm as per configuration of the “Host connection and power state” default configuration.

Now there are a number of reasons why this might happen. Typically Network Ports to be configured through the firewall or eventually a symptom of a congested network. It is always a good idea to take a look and review the best practices for VMware vSphere Networking.

In the environment I did setup in my home lab I was receiving random VMware Host disconnects. Although the VMware ESXi Host were appearing disconnected I was still able to use the virtual machines associated with such Hosts.

When taking a look at issues reported in the Monitor section the triggered alarm was “Host connection and power state”.

After some troubleshooting and digging for more information it looks this behaviour can also happen with a fairly good network configuration. Everything in this case boils down to how the vCenter gets the heartbeat messages from the VMware ESXi Hosts. Luckily there’s a setting to configure this behaviour and the article will cover this in more detail.

When the vCenter is not receiving the heartbeat messages from the VMware ESXi Hosts it is automatically placing such Hosts in “Disconnected” status. Chances are that either this is through or simply the timeout for these messages is too low.

In addition when reviewing the issues in the monitor section we can see triggered alarms for “Host connection and power state”. The screenshot below shows an example of one of the random VMware Host disconnects.

Surely we can ty to reconnect the VMware ESXi Host from the Actions menu. Or even restart the Host. Chances are this behaviour might happen again.

Assuming we can rule out mis-configuration cases we can actually change the default polling time. All we need to do is to access the Advanced Settings options in the vCenter Server.

Manage > Settings > Advanced Settings

Let’s look for the following paramter:

“config.vpxd.heartbeat.notRespondingTimeout”

If this parameter does not exist we can manually create this one on the fly with the “Edit” option.

In my home lab I’m using latest version of vSphere 6.0u3 and could not find this parameter. Will create a new one and assign the value of “120”.

This means that now the default polling time for the vCenter to check about heartbeat messages is set to 2 minutes.

Let’s click “Add” and “OK” to amend the changes.

We should now get something similar to the screenshot below.

To make new changes effective we need to restart the VMware vCenter Server service. In this environment I’m using the vCenter installed on Windows. As usual we can do this from the Windows Services mmc panel. Or simply by issuing:

“services.msc”

As soon as we try to restart the VMware vCenter Server service the MMC will detect the relevant dependencies and restart them accordingly.

As soon as all services are restarted we can access again the VMware vSphere Console. And of course to be patient for all VMware services to use memory allocation on the machine.

After a few seconds we can now see the trigger about the “Host connection and power state” is now resolved.

Of course I would suggest to use configurations as close as possible to the minimum requirements. Running such configurations in a home lab is great as it gives us the option to learn more and test about different aspects of the deployments.

On occasion hosts can disconnect due to losing network heartbeats.  Shouldn’t happen often, but sometimes it does.  There is a default alarm for this “Host Connection State”, but it does not have email already setup.  Therefore, in a larger environment you may not be able to pinpoint exactly when your host disconnected.  This can cause issues including DRS failures, backup failures if using snapshots, and possibly even HA issues if the host failed.

Now, this alarm will trigger any time a host is disconnected.  So, I recommend only enabling email alerts if you are troubleshooting frequent disconnect issues.

Here is how to enable this type of alarm:

1.  Click on your Vcenter Object under host and clusters view.  Click Alarms and Definitions.

2.  Select the Host Connection and Power State alarm, right click, Select Edit Settings.

3.  This is the triggers that will alarm.

5.  Under actions have it send a notification to your monitoring email address.