Purpose
For troubleshooting purposes, it may be necessary to restart the management agents on your ESX host. This article provides steps to restart the management agents (mgmt-vmware and vmware-vpxa) directly on ESX or ESXi.
This article applies to ESX/ESXi 3.x, 4.x, and 5.0.
Resolution
Restarting the Management agents on ESXi
To restart the management agents on ESXi:
- Connect to the console of your ESXi host.
- Press F2 to customize the system.
- Log in as
root. - Use the Up/Down arrows to navigate to Restart Management Agents.
Note: In ESXi 4.1 and ESXi 5.0, this option is available under Troubleshooting Options. - Press Enter.
- Press F11 to restart the services.
- When the service has been restarted, press Enter.
- Press Esc to log out of the system.
Note: For more information about restarting the management service on an ESXi host, see Service mgmt-vmware restart may not restart hostd (1005566).
Restarting the Management agents on ESX
To restart the management agents on an ESX host:
- Log into your ESX host as root from either an SSH session or directly from the console.
- Run this command:
service mgmt-vmware restart
Caution: Ensure Automatic Startup/Shutdown of virtual machines is disabled before running this command or you risk rebooting the virtual machines. For more information, see Restarting hostd (mgmt-vmware) on ESX hosts restarts hosted virtual machines where virtual machine Startup/Shutdown is enabled (1003312) and Determining whether virtual machines are configured to autostart (1000163). - Press Enter.
- Run this command:
service vmware-vpxa restart - Press Enter.
- Type
logoutand press Enter to disconnect from the ESX host.If this process is successful, it appears as:
[root@server]# service mgmt-vmware restart]
Stopping VMware ESX Server Management services:
VMware ESX Server Host Agent Watchdog [ OKVMware ESX Server Host Agent [ OK ]
Starting VMware ESX Server Management services:
VMware ESX Server Host Agent (background) [ OK ]
Availability report startup (background) [ OK ]
[root@server]# service vmware-vpxa restart
Stopping vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]
Starting vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]
[root@server]#Note: If there are failures listed:
- The most common reason for a stopping task to fail is that the service is not started.
- If a starting task fails for the mgmt-vmware service, see Troubleshooting vmware-hostd service if it fails or stops responding (1002849).
- If a starting task fails for the vmware-vpxa service, see Troubleshooting the vCenter Server Agent when it does not start (1006128).
If starting or stopping the management agent fails try restarting it a second time. If the issue continues to exist after trying the steps in this article:
- Collect the VMware Support information. For more information, see Collecting diagnostic information for VMware ESX/ESXi using the vSphere Client (653) or, if it is required to collect logs from ESX/ESXi command line, seeCollecting diagnostic information for VMware ESX/ESXi using the vm-support command (1010705).
- File a support request with VMware Support and note this KB Article ID (1003490) in the problem description. For more information, see How to Submit a Support Request.
- Based on VMware KB 1003490
