I have ESXI 5.5 update 1 running on a Intel NUC and I've seen it get stupid twice now in six weeks. The symptoms are that the VMs are not accessible, although they show up as green/running in the Windows client. At that time the other VMs that are known are greyed out as unavailable in the gui, and when I log into the ESXi host via SSH a df looks very strange with the /vmfs/volumes/vm entry showing zero bytes for all columns....
~ # df
Filesystem Bytes Used Available Use% Mounted on
VMFS-5 0 0 0 0% /vmfs/volumes/vm
vfat 261853184 165478400 96374784 63% /vmfs/volumes/6bd3fde8-6e085f5c-08fa-706744cb5db9
vfat 261853184 165498880 96354304 63% /vmfs/volumes/104e0cef-148f4ff6-92f4-23c5628c7b64
vfat 299712512 202006528 97705984 67% /vmfs/volumes/53f1e12f-31e9cdc4-de70-c03fd566c7a4
If I use the Window client to shut down the VMs and put the host into maintenance mode, I can reboot it ok. When it comes back up all is fine, although I then need to get the host out of maintenance mode and restart the clients. The 'df' looks normal again....
~ # df
Filesystem Bytes Used Available Use% Mounted on
VMFS-5 536602476544 385139867648 151462608896 72% /vmfs/volumes/vm
vfat 261853184 165478400 96374784 63% /vmfs/volumes/6bd3fde8-6e085f5c-08fa-706744cb5db9
vfat 261853184 165498880 96354304 63% /vmfs/volumes/104e0cef-148f4ff6-92f4-23c5628c7b64
vfat 299712512 202006528 97705984 67% /vmfs/volumes/53f1e12f-31e9cdc4-de70-c03fd566c7a4
Any ideas (a) what is going on, (b) which logs to look for what in, and (c) how to prevent it ?
I have to admit being lost in all the vWhatever product buzzwords and strange cli interfaces and logfiles, so be nice :-)