IT Infrastructure Services Blog

How to restart Management agents on ESXi host

Posted on April 21, 2015 Updated on April 27, 2015

Restarting the Management agents on ESXi

To restart the management agents on ESXi:

From the Direct Console User Interface (DCUI):

1. Connect to the console of your ESXi host.
2. PressF2 to customize the system.
3. Log in asroot.
4. Use theUp/Down arrows to navigate to Restart Management Agents.

   Note: In ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0, 5.1, 5.5 and 6.0 this option is available under Troubleshooting Options.

5. PressEnter.
6. PressF11 to restart the services.
7. When the service has been restarted, pressEnter.
8. PressEsc to log out of the system.

From the Local Console or SSH:

1. Log in to SSH or Local console as root.
2. Run these commands:

   /etc/init.d/hostd restart
   /etc/init.d/vpxa restart

   Note: In ESXi 4.x, run this command to restart thevpxa agent:

   service vmware-vpxa restart

   Alternatively:

• To reset the management network on a specific VMkernel interface, by default vmk0, run the command:

  esxcli network ip interface set -e false -i vmk0; esxcli network ip interface set -e true -i vmk0

  Note: Using a semicolon (;) between the two commands ensures the VMkernel interface is disabled and then re-enabled in succession. If the management interface is not running on vmk0, change the above command according to the VMkernel interface used.

• To restart all management agents on the host, run the command:

  services.sh restart

  Caution:

• Check if LACP is enabled on DVS for version 5.x and above. For more information, see vSphere 5.0 Networking Guide

If LACP is not configured, the services.sh script can be safely executed.

• If LACP is enabled and configured, do not restart management services using services.sh script instead restart independent services using /etc/init.d/module restart command.
• If the issue is not resolved, and you have to restart all the services that are a part of the services.sh script, take a downtime before proceeding to the script.

  Note: For more information about restarting the management service on an ESXi host, see Service mgmt-vmware restart may not restart hostd in ESX/ESXi (1005566).