Proper way to restart vsphere services on esxi 5 host

vmware-esxi

At $WORK, we recently moved from VMWare Server to ESXi 5. The Vsphere client connects to port 443 (SSL) on the server, and uses the originally generated ssl cert from the install.

I've replaced the rui.key and rui.crt files with our usual wildcard SSL cert, using the ssh interface to the ESXi server. Now, I need to restart whatever services on the ESXi host which provide access to the Vsphere client.

Does anyone have any idea about how to do this without rebooting the machine entirely? It seems like maybe restarting hostd with /etc/init.d/hostd restart would do it, but I don't want to accidentally bounce all the VM's, so I want to know for sure.

I'm really looking for the same functionality as the "Restart Management Agents" from the console, but via an ssh command line.

Best Answer

Check out this KB here:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1005566

There is a CLI command that will restart the management agents. Obviously SSH will need to be enabled.

Windows XP not supported by vSphere Client >5.1U1

I had the very same issue. The log file on ESXi stated that the cliend closed the connection.

After upgrading to ESXi 5.5 I obviously had to install the new client as well. During installation there was an notice that there might be a problem connecting to ESX server due to the operating system (Windows XP SP 3). In fact, I could not connect to my ESXi 5.5 with the exact same error message.

So I set up an Windows 8.1 box and installed the vSphere Client 5.5 there and could successfully connect to my ESXi 5.5U1 (build 1746018).

Note: if you cannot update your client OS to something above XP you might consider the following workarounds:

Use remote CLI commands to manage your VMs on the given host
downgrade to ESXi 5.1U1 with the following command:

esxcli software profile install -d https://hostupdate.vmware.com/software/VUM/PRODUCTION/main/vmw-depot-index.xml -p ESXi-5.1.0-20131004001-standard --ok-to-remove

(This command is issued on the ESXi console. It can also be run remotely using something like "esxcli.exe -s vm.host.fqdn -u root ...". Be aware that the ESXi firewall must allow httpClient connections or use a local repository. For more information see e.g. @v-front

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ssh – Port Forwarding for ESXi remote management with VSphere

Ssh – Unable to connect to ESXi 5.1 after upgrading to 5.1 U2

Windows XP not supported by vSphere Client >5.1U1

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