how to find the vms running on esxi (if host not responding/removed from vc)

[khaliqamar]

hello,

one of my host lost connection from vcenter so during troubleshooting, i removed it from VC and now i cant reconnect.

the host is not responding its service console, though ssh or even i tried virtual client direct connect which also did not work.

none of other way left to reach at console of esxi.

how i can find the name of virtual machines running on it because now when i will hard reboot it. i have to start them manually and i am not sure how many VMs were running on it and which one are running on it.

any suggestion

[admin]

Hi ,

Since there is no connectivity to the Host via SSH, nor console. Reboot is the option left.

regarding the VM;s only option I am aware of is the logs.

1. Once rebooted if you have HA configured the VM's will be restarted on other hosts. so you could check the FDM logs for the VM;s that were registered.

2. On the affected host after reboot you could grep for the vmx that were registered.

# less /var/log/hostd.log  | grep -i ".vmx" | less

--Avinash

[Surankavmware]

Hi khaliqamar

You can check by using below command

esxcli vm process list

Check more on http://surankaeducation.in/vmware/esxcli-listing-running-vms-esxi-shell/

Rajaram

Sr. Vmware consultant

Suranka Technologies | www.suranka.com

Blogger @ http://surankaeducation.in

[khaliqamar]

Thanks  Avinash, i have already removed it from vcenter so will it still powered back the VMs ? i dont think so because now it is not a part of a cluster.

does it not clear all the logs after reboot ?

after couple of hours i am going to reboot it and let see , i will try all the provided solutions..

Thanks .. again

[continuum]

If the host does not answer via ssh then very likely esxcli also does not work anymore. In such a case connect to the host directly and use

localcli vm process list

[khaliqamar]

I cant connect the host by any way. no ssh, no DUCI, no standalone vcenter

[khaliqamar]

thank you everyone.

I shutdown the VMs and then hard rebooted host.

because host was not a part of cluster ( i removed it earlier ) HA did not start vms.

I attached the host to vcenter and it has already vms inside, so at the moment it attached to cluster HA kicks in and restarted the VMs.