Restart Mgmt Network Vs Restart Mgmt Agent

One is Network the other is the Agent.

e.g. network changes, you can restart the network stack (a freebsd.linux/unix thing!)

and you know all about the agent..and we did that here in this Question you asked ?

https://www.experts-exchange.com/questions/29174304/Restart-Management-Agent-on-ESX.html

Restart the Management Network
Restarting the management network interface might be required to restore networking or to renew a DHCP lease.
Restarting the management network will result in a brief network outage that might temporarily affect running virtual machines.
If a renewed DHCP lease results in a new network identity (IP address or host name), remote management software will be disconnected.
https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-51/index.jsp?topic=%2Fcom.vmware.vsphere.install.doc%2FGUID-E46F9F62-D1BB-4485-815D-08DBAE320CC3.html

Restart the Management Agent
You usually do this if you have an issue connecting directly to the ESXi host from vCenter server.

Will restarting management agents affect my VMs?
No, but it might affect any tasks that may be running on the ESXi host at the time of the restart. But there are no worries for VMs. I'd simply make sure that no backup jobs are running and as such, no snapshots are currently taken. Also, the management service IP connectivity will drop during a restart of the management agents on the ESXi hosts.

https://4sysops.com/archives/how-to-restart-vmware-esxi-management-agents/

Hello There,

You usually do this if you have an issue connecting directly to the ESXi host from vCenter server.

That s the reason I posted this question. From VCenter I was not able to connect to any of the ESX hosts to add them  , then I went I restarted the Management Network,

but it did not fix the issue.  I did some research then I found out about Restarting Management Agent, which is hidden here:

That one fixed my issue

Andrew,

I know that I posted a question in this regard in the past, but I realized now that they do not all do the same thing. Probably one can affect VMs functionalities while the other does not:
     services.sh restart

    /etc/init.d/hostd restart

    /etc/init.d/vpxa restart

Which of them is equivalent to restart Management Network and which is equivalent to Restart Management Agent ?

From VMware KB:
When you need to restart the management agent in ESXi:

• Cannot connect directly to the ESXi host or manage under vCenter server.
• vCenter Server displays the error: Virtual machine creation may fail because agent is unable to retrieve VM creation options from the host

Restart the ESXi host daemon and vCenter Agent services using these commands:
/etc/init.d/hostd restart
/etc/init.d/vpxa restart

To restart all management agents on the host, run the command:
services.sh restart
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003490

You do NOT restart the Network if you have a host issue.


  services.sh restart

    /etc/init.d/hostd restart

    /etc/init.d/vpxa restart

all of the above are "Management Agents."

vpxa  is the Agent on ESX host ..Vcenter talks to vpxa and vpxa talks to hostd and hostd talks to ESX host.

So if you restart vpxa alone, I do not think you are accomplishing anything.
Probably it is better to restart them both vpxa and hostd.

I do not know if Services.sh means vpxa+hostd. ?

Thank you