Lost access to collector

[Fredrick Willis]

Hello,

I'm having issues accessing the collector. The collector has been up and running for about 3 weeks without any issues. On yesterday one of my admins restarted vCenter (5.5), and since the restart I haven't been able to access the collector via the website or via vCenter. When trying to access from the console in vCenter, I just get the 'Press any key to continue.' I press any key, and nothing happens. I've waited for hours, and still nothing. The VM has been restarted multiple times, I've added additional resources.

Any idea on what's going on here?

Thanks in advance,

Fredrick

[Lynden Price · Accepted solution]

Hi Fredrick,

After restarting the VM and waiting 15-20 mins for it to boot, try pinging the IP address that you had assigned to it. If you are able to ping it, try to SSH into it.

Thanks,

Lynden

[Fredrick Willis]

Hi Lynden,

I have tired that several times. I do not receive a reply when pinging, and when trying to ssh it timeouts. 

Thanks.

[Lynden Price]

Hi Fredrick,

It sounds like an issue with the server itself. You'll probably end up needing to re-deploy, if it isn't responding to ping and is still not accessible via vmware console.

Thanks,

Lynden

[Fredrick Willis]

Lynden,

Any idea what might have happened? A simple restart wouldn't cause this. Is there any additional troubleshooting you can recommend? 

[Lynden Price]

My guess would be that the server is encountering some kind of error during boot that is causing it to either hang and never complete or to continually restart. This is hidden from view with the "Press Any Key" screen, so you aren't able to see whatever is causing the server to not complete booting.

The only reason I can think that restarting vCenter would cause the issue is if it is somehow related to the virtual harddisk or switch. Are you having issues with any other VMs?

Also, if vCenter was restarted without gracefully shutting down the server, then obviously that could have caused some problem with the sever itself, although that is unlikely unless the server was in the middle of patching/upgrading at the time. 

Thanks,

Lynden