(or password)

this was a new one for me. after some problems involving the vcenter server a particular host was issuing this error. according to the vmware kb (proof: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2014275) and various blogs the easiest solution is to disconnect and reconnect the host to vcenter. unfortunately, after disconnecting the host i could not reconnect the host to vcenter.

i tried the usual bag of tricks: restarting management agents, checking top for oddities (this was full ESX), checking the vpxa.log, even a iscsi vmhba rescan. i couldn’t reboot the host because production vms were still running on it.

eventually i found some blogs that mentioned uninstalling the vcenter agent altogether and letting a new agent reinstall. this did the trick.

rpm -qa | grep vpx
rpm -e <package name from above>
service mgmt-vmware restart

i could then reconnect the host back to vcenter. also none of this is disruptive to the host connectivity or the vms running on the host.

sources:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?cc=us&lc=en&docname=c02055373
http://vmwise.com/2011/03/21/when-a-reconnect-is-not-enough/
http://geekysolution.blogspot.com/2013/02/cannot-contact-specified-host-host-may.html

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