Alarm unable to send email

[Markb111889]

ESXi 4.1.0, 381591 - Experienced a PSOD which has been attributed to disk failure.  The default host connection state alarm in vCenter is configured to send an email upon change of state.  It did not, logging the following (partially redacted) message:

Alarm 'Host connection state' on vmwesxrtp015.vmware.blah.blah cannot send email to...(email addresses removed)

This was in the midst of HA restarting all of the virtual machines on other hosts in the cluster.

Has anyone ever experience this same behavior?  Any idea what the cause was for the failure to send the email?  Anything to be done to prevent it in the future.  Thanks in advance.

[weinstein5]

Welcome  to the Community - The most common issue I have seen is the inability of the vCenter Server not being able to reach the SMTP host -

[durakovicduro83]

Yes can you to your mail server.

Best is to try telnet "mailserserv" 25 port

Cheers,

Denis

[vmroyale]

Hello.

McAfee is notorious for stopping this communication, if you are using it on vCenter.

Good Luck!

[myatthu9]

For my environment, even I put my source IP Addresses [VMWare ESXi] as whitelist servers.

[Markb111889]

There is no indication that the SMTP server or network were down during the time of the PSOD.  Symantec Endpoint Protection is installed on the vCenter server but has never impeded outbound SMTP traffic.  The event occurred after hours and as such the PSOD was not discovered until a technician went into the datacenter in the morning.  When he discovered the disk failure and powered down the machine, vCenter then sent the "host connection state changed from yellow to red" message.  The host was unresponsive enough for HA to take over and re-power the VMs on other hosts, but not unresponsive enough to trigger a state change?  Somebody please help me understand this.  Thanks.