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I've been having some trouble with my virtual machines the last few days. When i fire up vSphere the NFS datastores intermittently appear offline / inaccessible. The NFS shares are on my Windows Home Server (WHS2011).

I've had a look in the windows event logs and can't see any problems. All 3 datastores are on the same windows server and sometimes 1 or more appear online and the other(s) offline- so this suggests it's something at the ESXi end i think?

How can i proceed to troubleshoot the issue?

Thanks

Lee

Lee Tickett
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    Have you checked the logs on the ESXi host for any weirdness? Also, WHS and NFS shares = ewww. – growse Jan 02 '12 at 23:37
  • Is there somewhere I should look other than the Events tab in vSphere? There are lots of "Lost connection to server x mount point y mounted as z" and then corresponding connection restored messages. I think i'll be moving back to FreeNAS soon! – Lee Tickett Jan 02 '12 at 23:45
  • Gee Whiz comment: I haven't used FreeNAS specifically with ESXi. I use it other places with great results. I have used OpenFiler with ESXi without problems. – Keith Stokes Jan 02 '12 at 23:57
  • Try enabling SSH on the ESXi host, and then logging in and looking at some stuff in `/var/log`. Or, go to the host's physical console, and there's an option in there to view system logs. Or, in vCenter client, there should be a `File->Export->System logs` option that'll give you a tgz full of nice things. – growse Jan 03 '12 at 09:08

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I found quite a helpful article here: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1003967

The second step about using vmkping appears to've highlighted the issue as network related (on the ESXi server end):

/var/log # vmkping -c 20 192.168.0.32
PING 192.168.0.32 (192.168.0.32): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=0.393 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0.287 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=0.474 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=3 ttl=128 time=0.431 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=4 ttl=128 time=0.410 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=5 ttl=128 time=0.416 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=6 ttl=128 time=0.380 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=7 ttl=128 time=0.488 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=11 ttl=128 time=0.443 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=16 ttl=128 time=0.308 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=17 ttl=128 time=0.350 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.32: icmp_seq=18 ttl=128 time=0.291 ms

--- 192.168.0.32 ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 12 packets received, 40% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.287/0.389/0.488 ms
/var/log # vmkping -c 20 192.168.0.33
PING 192.168.0.33 (192.168.0.33): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 192.168.0.33: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0.295 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.33: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.314 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.0.33: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=0.311 ms

--- 192.168.0.33 ping statistics ---
20 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 85% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.295/0.307/0.314 ms
Lee Tickett
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  • Damn. Fixed the network issue and the datastores are still offline (even after a reboot of the ESXi server). – Lee Tickett Jan 03 '12 at 09:54
  • Migrated my virtual machines to FreeNAS and it has been a lot better but has dropped off a few times. I'm hoping to take delivery of new dual-port nics for the fileservers in the next few days so will see if this helps! – Lee Tickett Jan 03 '12 at 22:29