Sometimes, and for what seems like no good reason, we have hosts in our vSphere clusters that seem to not have such a happy time with PowerPath/VE. I can tell you the symptoms, but can’t tell you the cause.

It should look like this.

The workaround we’ve come up with is to put the host into Maintenance Mode, uninstall PP/VE, and reinstall.

Here’s the commands you’ll need to run via the vMA. (BTW we still have issues with passthrough AD authentication on the ESXi boxes when using vMA – but I don’t care anymore).

login as: domain\adminuser
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Password:
Welcome to vMA
run ‘vma-help’ or see http://www.vmware.com/go/vma for more details.

[domain\adminuser@vMAhost ~]$ vifptarget -s vCenterhost

[domain\adminuser@vMAhost ~][vCenterhost]$ vihostupdate –server esxi.domain.internal –query
Enter username: root
Enter password:
———Bulletin ID———         —–Installed—–                 —————-Summary—————–
hp-nmi-driver-1.1.02                2010-11-27T03:20:56     HP NMI Sourcing Driver for VMware ESX/ESXi 4.1
hpq-esxi4.1uX-bundle-1.0a  2010-11-27T04:06:02     HP ESXi Bundle 1.0a
EMC-PP5.4.2.00.00-b298     2010-11-27T04:39:12       PowerPath 5.4.SP2 for ESX
ESXi410-201011401-BG            2010-12-15T00:45:41      Updates Firmware
VEM410-201010411-BG           2011-02-15T02:42:29      Cisco Nexus 1000V VEM
VEM410-201010112-BG           2011-02-15T02:42:29      Cisco Nexus 1000V  4.0(4)SV1(3b)
VEM410-201101108-BG           2011-02-15T03:57:07     Cisco Nexus 1000V  4.2(1)SV1(4)

[domain\adminuser@vMAhost ~][vCenterhost]$ vihostupdate –server esxi.domain.internal –remove –bulletin EMC-PP5.4.2.00.00-b298
Enter username: root
Enter password:
Error encountered:
   Message     – The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.

[domain\adminuser@vMAhost ~][vCenterhost]$