ESX disconnects randomly or when doing VI client tasks from VC, task randomly timeout after a long idle time

By Roman - Last updated: Donnerstag, Februar 5, 2009 - Save & Share - One Comment

There’s a new problem a few customers have reported whereby-

ESX disconnects randomly from Virtualcenter
ESX disconnects when performing VI Client tasks from Virtualcenter.
Tasks randomly timeout after a long idle time
"An error occurred communicating to the remote host" pops up.

This only refers to Update 3. This issue seem to be affecting customers with firewalls using stateful inspection, such as a Juniper ISG 2000, Software Revision 6.1.0R3.

The problem occurs because of SOAP timeouts, and this behavior did not exist in VC 2.0.x or 2.5 GA, as they used a different mechanism to communicate with ESX.

A knowledgebase article (1008142) is due out imminently on this problem.

Create a dummy VM on each host (e.g. 16 MB RAM, no disk, no network).
Set CPU affinity to the last core to prevent VMotion.
Create a new Scheduled Task that performs:
- Change power state: Power-on dummy VM. Every hour, on the hour.
Create another Scheduled Task that performs:
- Change power state: Power-off dummy VM. Every hour, 30 minutes after the hour.

Meanwhile, I know Engineering is aware of this issue and actively investigating it.

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ESX disconnects randomly or when doing VI client tasks from VC, task randomly timeout after a long idle time

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