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... as soon as I enter a user name and password, it freezes. Won't let me hit "enter" to log in. Management ports are not responding, guest OS's are not responding.

It did this once last week after 1yr+ of being online, but it happened twice today already (Christmas, of COURSE)...

I don't see any event logs that even indicate a problem. Where do I start looking? What information is needed to better troubleshoot this issue?

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  • Presumably the hardware is all on the HCL? I'd be tempted to just wipe it and rebuild - probably quicker than troubleshooting - do you have the 'support assistant'? if so use it to capture the logs and have it auto-raise a case with vmw. Happy Christmas by the way :)
    – Chopper3
    Dec 25, 2014 at 13:09
  • More detail, please?
    – ewwhite
    Dec 25, 2014 at 23:30

1 Answer 1

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I suspect an I/O issue.

Can you detail the hardware and storage being used? Also provide the ESXi version and build number.

Often times, you'll see this happen if the storage used by ESXi becomes unavailable. Remember that the networking stack and SSH daemon are running in RAM. But entering a password requires a read from disk. You likely won't see logging of any sort here either.

Long-term, if your hardware proves to be healthy, make sure you're on a current release/patch of VMware ESXi.

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  • my main data store is on a fairly new LSI RAID controller with new SATA drives, but the OS is on a standalone SATA disk. Is there any way to tell if this is failing? Dec 27, 2014 at 20:29
  • @JeremyHolovacs You have ESXi installed on a single disk without RAID? Is it attached directly to the motherboard SATA port?
    – ewwhite
    Dec 27, 2014 at 20:30
  • The OS is, yeah... all the VMs are on the RAID array. It was a challenge just to get that. Dec 28, 2014 at 15:16

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