VMware ESXi, 6.5.0, 11925212
PuTTY Release 0.70
When attempting to connect to various ESXi 6.5 hosts receiving message: Network error: Connection refused. This is recent behavior, previously successful connecting with putty client.
- System > Security Profile > SSH service running on host
- Able to establish SSH connection by using localhost login on host
- Able to establish SSH connection by using Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 7.6, ONLY ONCE
- then will receive Connection refused error
- after rebooting ESXi host able to establish a ssh session through RHEL, but subsequent logins will fail
- No firewalls between clients and servers
- Followed KB (1039095) and modified /var/run/inetd.conf per article
- Per Community Discussion modified PuTTY, Connection > SSH > Kex”. Selected “Diffie-Hellman group exchange” and moved to the bottom of the list, so it is not used
- sshd.conf > MaxStartups 10:30:60
- Nothing modified in /etc/ssh/ssh.config or sshd.config
I had installed Dell OpenManage at one point, but currently OpenManage server has been un-associated from the vCenter server and the OpenMange server is powered off.
Attached are the outputs from successful and failed ssh -vvv sessions.
Any ideas? Thanks