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If you are running an HP customized image of ESXi on some old Proliant server, you may have some issues as describe in KB 2094618 (The hp-ams process does not stop when restarting ESXi management agents on HP ProLiant G5, G6 and G7-series servers)

When restarting ESXi management agents on HP ProLiant G5, G6 and G7-series servers running versions of HP Agentless Management Service (AMS) prior to 10.1.0 , you experience these symptoms:

 

  • In the Recent Tasks pane of vCenter Server, you see multiple tasks in the In Progress state
  • Virtual machines that still have a stuck In Progress task are greyed out
  • You are unable to edit the settings on a virtual machine that has a stuck task
  • The host in which the virtual machines reside are running on HP Proliant Gen 5, 6 or 7 hardware
  • When you run the services.sh restart command within the ESXi console, you see this output while stopping the hp-amsservice:Running hp-ams.sh restart
    ~ # Stopping process …
    Stopping process …
    Stopping process …
    Stopping process …
    Stopping process …
    Stopping process …
    Stopping process …

Cause

This issue occurs when you use an older HP Customized VMware image to update any HP ProLiant G5, G6 or G7 servers running VMware ESXi 5.0, 5.1 or 5.5. These models cause the HP Agentless Management Service (AMS), Versions 9.5, 9.6 or 10.0 to make continuous restart attempts and potentially fill up syslog with this message:

root: hp-ams-wd: Detected one or more hpHelper process(es) have stopped running. Restarting…

root: hp-ams stop service…

root: hp-ams-wd: hp-ams start…

root: hp-ams start service…

hpHelper[15106]: hp-ams ver 9.5.0-26: System Product Name is ProLiant BL460c G6.

hpHelper[15106]: hp-ams ver 9.5.0-26: This program will only run on HP ProLiant Gen8 or newer platforms.

Currently, HP AMS is only supported on ProLiant Gen8 (or later) hosts.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, remove the hp-ams package from the affected ESXi hosts and replace it with the latest version, 10.1.0 or later. Alternatively , may reinstall ESXi from the latest HP Customized ESXi Images dated March 2015 or later.

To remove the hp-ams package from an ESXi host:
  1. Move the ESXi host in to maintenance mode.
  2. Log in to the ESXi host as root.
  3. Run this command to stop the HP Agentless Management Service:/etc/init.d/hp-ams.sh stopNote: If it is in the process of stopping, press CTRL+Cto stop the current process.
  4. Run this command to remove the the HP Agentless Management Service:esxcli software vib remove -n hp-ams
  5. Reboot the ESXi host.

To install the latest HP AMS VIB in an existing ESXi installation, follow the instructions in the Existing ESXi installation using esxcli and async driver VIB file paragraph in Installing async drivers on VMware ESXi 5.x and ESXi 6.0.x (2005205).

You can find the HP Agentless Management Service (AMS) Offline Bundle for VMware vSphere 5.5, hp-ams-esxi5.5-bundle-10.1.0-12.zip, dated 30 Mar 2015 at * RECOMMENDED * HP Agentless Management Service Offline Bundle for VMware vSphere 5.5.

Note:The preceding links were correct as of August 12, 2015. If you find a link is broken, provide feedback and a VMware employee will update the link.

 

Manually disable hp-ams Service
You can easily stop the hp-ams Service to test the impact. This change is active immediately and does not persist a reboot. You do not have to enable Maintenance Mode:

[email protected]:~ $ /etc/init.d/hp-ams.sh stop

Remove hp-ams Package
To make this change persistent across reboots you have to remove the hp-ams package. This change requires a reboot:

[email protected]:~ $ esxcli software vib remove -n hp-ams
Removal Result
   Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
   Reboot Required: true
   VIBs Installed:
   VIBs Removed: Hewlett-Packard_bootbank_hp-ams_500.9.3.5-02.434156
   VIBs Skipped:

Also there is another annoing issue related to vMotion and describe in VMware KB 2085618 (ESXi host cannot initiate vMotion or enable services and reports the error: Heap globalCartel-1 already at its maximum size.Cannot expand). vSphere Client reports the error:

Heap globalCartel-1 already at its maximum size of 312160. Cannot expand.
Could not start VMX: msg.vmk.status.VMK_NO_MEMORY

In this case you need to upgrade to ESXi 5.5 Update 3 and upgrade to AMS version 10.0.1

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Virtualization, Cloud and Storage Architect. Tech Field delegate. VMUG IT Co-Founder and board member. VMware VMTN Moderator and vExpert 2010-24. Dell TechCenter Rockstar 2014-15. Microsoft MVP 2014-16. Veeam Vanguard 2015-23. Nutanix NTC 2014-20. Several certifications including: VCDX-DCV, VCP-DCV/DT/Cloud, VCAP-DCA/DCD/CIA/CID/DTA/DTD, MCSA, MCSE, MCITP, CCA, NPP.