Host will not join back to vCenter after updating with Update Manager

[JohnMurphy]

Hi,

Staged and completed remediation of patches on ESXi 5.5.  After Host rebooted and vCenter will no longer connect to Host.  I can however connect directly to the Host and log in with root.

[rcporto]

Please, tell us the exact build version for the vSphere ESXi host and the vCenter Server.

[JohnMurphy]

vCenter  is 5.5 Update 3 build 3000241

ESXi is updated now to 5.5 update 3B 3248547

[rcporto · Accepted solution]

This KB explains why: VMware KB: After upgrading an ESXi host to 5.5 Update 3b and later, the host is no longer manageable...

What you need to do is update your vCenter Server first to Update 3b and after that update the hosts to Update 3b. Anyway, if you can't update your vCenter now, the workaround is enable SSLv3 on vSphere ESXi hosts again, but not that this is not recommended by VMware.

[douglasarcidino]

Out of curiosity, can you right-click on the host in vcenter and click "connect?" It's possible it was disconnected too long or improperly and just didn't reconnect automatically.

[JohnMurphy]

Hi Richardson,

Thanks for the KB. I will run through the vCenter Upgrade and see if that resolves it because it looks like this is what I'm running into.

[JohnMurphy]

Hi Douglas,

Thanks for the reply. I tried to connect the host manually but it gave an error. The error was something like cannot contact host on specified network. I can ping it though. So I am going to run through the vCenter upgrade as suggested above and see if this resolves it.

[douglasarcidino]

Roger that. Saw his post afterward. I don't have any hosts running your version of ESXi to actually test with so it was kind of a Hail Mary.

Good luck.

[JohnMurphy]

This was exactly the issue, once the vCenter was upgraded the Host rejoined without an issue. Thanks for the prompt resolution!

[JohnMurphy]

The upgrade did the trick anyway. Thanks for giving a helping hand. Much appreciated!