I have a home server with a Q6600 Quad Core and 8GB of RAM running with VMWare ESXi 3.5 for about 8 months now. I have 2 datastores, with 1TB (SATA HDs) each, one with 150GB free and the other with 240GB free. I have 9 VMs running 24x7 on it. Everything was doing great, until yesterday.
Out of the blues, I stopped getting responses from the VMs in the ESXi. At first, I could connect using the Infrastructure Client but, when if I tried to get information from any VM, I would get a message that the VM could not be reached. Looking at the Host info, it would show me networking info, cpu, memory, but when I tried to reach the datastore, it would normally stop responding. I was only able to open the datastore located where ESXi is installed once, and all the VMs were there. Now, I can't connect to it anymore, and I really don't know what to do.
Update I've done several reboots on the host, and the problem repeats itself. I connect through the Infrastructure client but, after a few seconds, it becomes unresponsive. After a while, now I can't connect through the client anymore End Update
What is the best course of action to diagnose the problem? I can access the ESXi screen without a problem, but I don't know what to do. I was thinking of reinstalling it, maybe with version 4.0, but I'm not sure I should do that. Where (and how) can I access anything that could help me figure out what's wrong?
Tks
New Update I reset the setting back to default, and I was able to connect with the VI Client. I reattached one of my VMs, and started booting it up, but I had problems again; the VM tried to boot and ended up locking up, and the VI client became unresponsive, and I couldn't connect to it again. Following @pehrs advice, I went into unsupported mode, and checked the /var/log/message, and I found a bunch of Errors reading. Below is a sample:
Aug 31 02:59:36 vmkernel: 0:00:28:41.882 cpu0:2179)StorageMonitor: 196: vmhba33:0:0:0 status =2/0 0xb 0x0 0x0
Aug 31 02:59:37 vmkernel: 0:00:28:42:357 cpu0:5279)<3>ata4: transageld ATA stat/err 0x71/04 to SCSI SK/ASC/ASCQ 0xb/00/00
Aug 31 02:59:37 vmkernel: <4>ata4: status=0x71 { DriveReady DeviceFault SeekComplete Error 0:00:28:42.357 cpu0: 5279)}
last message repeated 1 times
I also got some DriveStatusError on some lines of the same file. Now, looking at the /var/log/vmware/hostd-0.log, I'm getting some errors after successfully opening the vmdk files of the first VM that I reattached :
[2010-08-31 02:44:15:199 'PropertyCollector' 213004 warning] GetPropertyProvider failed for haTask-ha-folder-vm-vim.Folder.registerVm-45
[2010-08-31 02:45:05:693 'PropertyCollector' 98311 warning] GetPropertyProvider failed for haTask-16-vim.VirtualMachine.powerOn-49
I get several other GetPropertyProvider errors after that, then some timeouts... It seems clear I have a HD problem. What can I do to save my VMs? Can I do a scancheck on the HDs? If yes, how? Thanks! End of Update