From time to time, it may be necessary to restart the management agents on an ESXi server. The process is very straightforward and is non-intrusive to the functioning of the virtual machines hosted there.
This allows you to SSH or telnet into the afflicted host, and perform basic functions that would normally require you to open the iLO Remote Console via the blade management interface, or (gasp) go to the console physically. However, utilizing a remote command prompt method is much quicker.
In order for to perform this action, you must have Remote Tech Support mode enabled.
Utilizing your favorite secure telnet or SSH client, such as PuTTY, connect to the ESX server that you need to restart the management agents on. Since there is no Active Directory integration, you’ll be utilizing the local account in order perform this operation. In this demonstration, I am using the root account, but for security reasons, you should never allow root remote access. Create a different elevated account to perform these types of functions.
After logging you’ll be presented with a screen such as this:
login as: root
root@myesxserver's password:
You have activated Tech Support Mode.
The time and date of this activation have been sent to the system logs.
VMware offers supported, powerful system administration tools. Please
see www.vmware.com/go/sysadmintools for details.
Tech Support Mode may be disabled by an administrative user.
Please consult the ESXi Configuration Guide for additional
important information.
~ #
In order to restart the management agents, two commands are required. The transcript of a typical agent service restart session is shown below, with the user input shown in bold italic.
[root@myesxserver root]# service mgmt-vmware restart.
Stopping VMware ESX Server Management services:
VMware ESX Server Host Agent Watchdog [ OK ]
VMware ESX Server Host Agent [ OK ]
Starting VMware ESX Server Management services:
VMware ESX Server Host Agent (background) [ OK ]
Availability report startup (background) [ OK ]
[root@myesxserver root]# service vmware-vpxa restart.
Stopping vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]
Starting vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]
[root@myesxserver root]# exit.
After the services have been restarted, the exit command is given in order to close the session and log off. Your management agents are now restarted.