I am having an odd issue after performing a 5.5u1 interactive upgrade on one of my servers.
Basically, the upgrade appeared to work and the server boots. I can ping it and connect to it long enough to receive the certificate error in a web browser. However, the system appears to be so hung on doing some sort of process, that everything else I do times out before it can be completed. This results in me being basically unable to manage it from the vSphere client. I CAN interact with it at the console, but actions are painfully slow and I can see that the boot media is constantly busy doing something (though I don't know what), leading me to believe that it is effectively IO-bound on some internal process. There are no virtual machines running.
I'm looking for assistance in determining what failed and correcting it. I am vSphere-familiar, but I am a network engineer primarily, so assume I'm a noob for the purposes of explaining your answers.
Here is what I've done so far:
-Installed 5.5u1 interactively off of a DVD using the file: VMware-VMvisor-Installer-5.5.0.update01-1623387.x86_64.iso. This is the same disc I successfully upgraded an identical machine with only a few hours earlier.
-Re-installed 5.5u1 interactively off the same DVD.
-Allowed the system to just run for several hours in case there was some sort of post-install process running to give it time to complete.
-Repeatedly tried to "connect" to the box from vSphere client and web client through the vCenter server. (VCenter 5.5.0-10000 is running as a VM on the other box). Receive "Cannot contact the specified host..."
-Rebooted several times.
-Confirmed that the host is reachable through the configured address from VCenter and other devices (by using Ping). All devices are on the same VLAN with no firewall or private VLANs or anything goofy that would limit connectivity.
The environment is as follows:
-2x ML150 G6 w/2x E5504 CPUs (Quad 2.0Ghz), 48GB RAM. Onboard NIC plus quad 1Gbps PCIe NIC. 32Gb USB flash media (boot). No internal disk.
-2x FreeNAS 9.2.1.3 x64 iSCSI devices. About 10 targets in a dual-VLAN multipath configuration.
-1x Cisco 2960 Ethernet switch. Multiple VLANs. iSCSI VLANs are setup for jumbo frames.
The problem child is one of the ML150s. The other ML150 upgraded without issue and is working fine.
It is possible, though I am unsure, that the problem ML150 had been running a 4.x version and was upgraded to 5.1, while the working system was a 5.1 fresh build.
Both systems were working without issue prior to the upgrade (on 5.1)
Any assistance you can provide would be helpful. My next step is to blow away the system and just rebuild it, but I'd like to avoid that.