VMWare ESXi Host - occasionally stalls when loading VMWare environment at startup.

Where does it stall, and what do you mean by stall, do you mean it stops ?

e.g. on BOOT off SD card it stops ?

Are you using SD cards provided by Dell ? Good Quality SD cards, all our Dell R630s use Mirrored SD cards, and we do not have issues with ESXi Booting.

Are you using the DELL OEM version of ESXi ?

I would not waste time backing up configuration, and restoring to a new config at present.

Remove the SD card, replace with a different brand, SanDisk, Kingston, HP - these are brands we use.

Install ESXi again, and test BOOT.

You can backup the current configuration, and restore to the same version of ESXi.

 Using the vSphere CLI, qhich you have to install.

vicfg-cfgbackup --server=ESXi_host_IP_address --username=root -s output_file_name

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see here

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2042141

You don't say whether it keeps running once fully booted or whether you have other identical servers without problems but that is likely as you have no local disks. Andrew is probably right as usual, once the OS is read into RAM that SD card doesn't really so anything, you can pull it out and VMware will keep running. You can also use a USB stick to test/boot if you can't get to the SD card.

Thanks for the response to this question.  Basically the boot up process stops during the VMWare load/boot sequence. e.g. on one occasion it stopped when loading vmtoolsd and I left it overnight but it never progressed from there. It seems to boot through the Dell hardware config screen okay stopping at an apparent random point during the  VMWare environment load.  [Note: it normally loads correctly after 2 or 3 startup attempts]
I am using the original Dell SD cards that came with the new server. We are using VMWare's ESXi not a Dell OEM version.
One thought - does this sound like an SD card problem or is it more likely to be a VMWare problem?

It seems that installing the VMWare Power CLI is something I need to do. However, please forgive my ignorance but one thing that puzzles me is that in my environment the  vcentre is a VMWare Linux Vcenter virtual appliance. What machine do I load the Power CLI onto? Do I need to install it onto the appliance or can I install it on any virtual machine in the vmware environment and connect  that way?

This is the procedure I was thinking of adopting

Copy config from SD card to a USB stick

Swap the SD cards in the server

Restart the Server and load the VMWare ESXi op system?

Copy over the original saved configuration

or is there a simpler method?

Thanks

Thanks Andrew. Set me on the right course.

no problems, good luck...

Thanks Sebastian. That was really helpful.