Why are my ESXi hosts disconnected after host reboot

[gregheywood]

Hello,

All was generally OK in one of my VMware clusters apart from the fact that it was all running in evaluation mode, and the SSH service had been enabled on some of the hosts. I added the licence keys for vCenter and vSphere and assigned them to the hosts/servers, modified the SSH service, and rebooted.

Now, the hosts generally come back up as disconnected in vCenter (I rebooted these a couple of days ago before with issues) with an error saying "Cannot synchronize host <hostname>. Cannot complete login due to incorrect user name or password."

I can "connect" the hosts again, but following a reboot of the hosts, they are disconnected again.

Any ideas?

[ggautam7741]

This issue may occur if heartbeat packets are not received from the host before the one minute timeout period expires. These heartbeat packets are UDP packets sent over port 902

If ports are configured, verify if network traffic is allowed to pass from the ESXi/ESX host to the vCenter Server system, and that it is not blocking UDP port 902.

To perform a basic verification from the guest operating system perspective:

1. Click Start > Run, type wf.msc, and click OK. The Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Management console appears.
2. In the left pane, click Inbound Rules.
3. Right-click the VMware vCenter Server -host  heartbeat rule and click Properties.
4. In the Properties dialog, click the Advanced tab.
5. Under Profiles, ensure that the Domain option is selected.

Ensure that these ports are open in the firewall between vCenter Server and the ESXi/ESX hosts:

• 902 - UDP & TCP
• 443 - TCP

[ggautam7741]

This issue may occur if heartbeat packets are not received from the host before the one minute timeout period expires. These heartbeat packets are UDP packets sent over port 902

If ports are configured, verify if network traffic is allowed to pass from the ESXi/ESX host to the vCenter Server system, and that it is not blocking UDP port 902.

To perform a basic verification from the guest operating system perspective:

1. Click Start > Run, type wf.msc, and click OK. The Windows Firewall with Advanced Security Management console appears.
2. In the left pane, click Inbound Rules.
3. Right-click the VMware vCenter Server -host  heartbeat rule and click Properties.
4. In the Properties dialog, click the Advanced tab.
5. Under Profiles, ensure that the Domain option is selected.

Ensure that these ports are open in the firewall between vCenter Server and the ESXi/ESX hosts:

• 902 - UDP & TCP
• 443 - TCP

Hope this will help in case not already verified.