Symptoms
You cannot connect ESXi/ESX to VirtualCenter/vCenter Server.
You cannot connect directly to the ESXi/ESX host from the VMware Infrastructure Client / vSphere Client.
You cannot stop or start a virtual machine.
A virtual machine is shown as running in vCenter Server when it is not.
vCenter Server displays the error:
Log in to your ESX host as root from either an SSH session or directly from the console.
Run this command:
service mgmt-vmware restart
Caution: Ensure Automatic Startup/Shutdown of virtual machines is disabled before running this command or you risk rebooting the virtual machines. For more information, see Restarting hostd (mgmt-vmware) on ESX hosts restarts hosted virtual machines where virtual machine Startup/Shutdown is enabled (1003312) and Determining whether virtual machines are configured to autostart (1000163).
Press Enter.
Run this command:
service vmware-vpxa restart
Press Enter.
Type logout and press Enter to disconnect from the ESX host.
If this process is successful, it appears as:
[root@server]# 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@server]# service vmware-vpxa restart
Stopping vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]
Starting vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]
[root@server]#