Since I enabled alarms in VirtualCenter on 10/07/2008 we have encountered 14 seperate false alarms regarding host connectivity.

Here’s the alarm:

Target: hostname.goes.here

Old Status: Green New Status: Red

Current value: Host connection state - (State = Not responding)

Alarm: Host connection state ([Red State Is Equal To notResponding])

Description: Alarm Host connection state on hostname.goes.here changed from Green to Red

Here’s what we went through with support.

  • Sending Diagnostics from VC
  • Found out we are running an unsupported HBA (QLA4010’s are not supported in ESX 3.5, but in ESX 3) … this was frustrating because we have seen that they will work with ESX 3.5 elsewhere from VMware
  • Advised to up the Service Console RAM to 800 MB from 272 MB

We haven’t been seeing false alarms since.