Hi Everyone,
I have tried relentlessly to find a solution to my problem over here with vCenter 4.1 where a host keeps getting disconnected from vCenter after every 90 seconds. Based on the kb articles I have read it could be related to an IP/DNS/Heartbeat issue, none of which seem to be improperly configuerd in my situation.
Anyways here's a layout of my network, I have the main LAN which is on a 10.1.1.X network and a DMZ network which is on a 192.168.200.X ip scheme. There's no DHCP or DNS setup for the DMZ port, I assign every computer a static ip and google's public dns servers.Communication works between the subnets. I can ping the DMZ gateway just fine from my 10.x network and vice versa.
My ESXi host is on the DMZ network with an IP address of 192.168.200.11. My vSphere Client 4.1 is on my 10.1.1.x network as that's where my workstation is and I use that to connect to the host which works just fine. Never had an issue.
So today I downloaded vCenter 4.1 and installed it on my workstation and I added my ESXi host to it with the little wizard it has. The license agents etc are all added to the host just fine and everything shows up and running. Then about 90 seconds later, the host gets disconnected and theres a (not responding) message next to the host.
Now i'm not sure what exactly the issue is wether its a DNS issue or IP issue or some config files on the kernel. Solutions I have tried so far and which have not worked are :
1) Disabled the firewall on my workstation to see if that was an issue
2) Changed the xmlconfiguration file to xmlconfiguration.old ( as per VMware's kb article I had found)
3) Under vCenter settings and runtime settings, I assigned the management IP as the ip address of the computer where my vCenter is installed on which is 10.1.1.54 in my case.
4) Rebooted ESXi, restarted mangement services, disconnected host from vCenter and re-added host
Now i'm wondering since the host is on a DMZ, if anything has to be done with ports etc on the router. But i'm not sure what exactly has to be done. I found this on one of the VMware kb articles, but not really sure how to interpret it.
--The host goes into the Not Responding mode for a default 90 seconds time after adding it to vCenter Server. In case the vCenter Server is multi-homed, verify that the internal IP (that is reachable by the ESX hosts) is set as the management IP--.
But that's exactly the issue i'm having. Any ideas?