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This vague message turned into a nightmare for myself this past Sunday.  I was able to get the problem fixed with minimal downtime as the issue only came up during a Sunday maint. window (ironic).

I had patched my ESX hosts to Update2 (patched version) and started receiving the error “VMware HA Agent has an error” in my virtual infrastructure client.  First step is to make sure you’re running a compliant version of Virtual Center with your ESX.  Ok, Check.

Next check your host files in each esx host located here:  /etc/hosts

You should see the default line of 127.0.0.1 for localhost, below there needs to be at least one linewith the host your working on.

192.168.1.103     esx9.yourdomain.com     esx9

Over the past 3 years I’ve seen conflicting guidance over the configuration of the host files .  In 3.0.2 I was required to enter all my hosts in each host file, but now that seems to be resolved and only requires the local details of the host you’re working with.  In short make sure that you can ping your hosts from each host with the FQDN and/or friendly name and you should be all good there.

The next steps were found on some vmtn.net postings, and I lost the URL amongst all my troubleshooting but I saved the resolution.  For myself I found the following steps helpful in resolving the problem….

The problem in my situation was specifically around the Virtual Center agents and conflicting versions.

• Check the vpxa version on your host:  rpm -qa |grep vpxa
• That will give you the current version of vpxa that you’re running. eg:  VMware-vpxa-2.5.0-104215
• Stop the VMware mgmt service:  service mgmt-vmware stop
• Stop the vpx agent:  /etc/init.d/vmware-vpxa stop
• The vpx agent error can be ignored (warning: /etc/vmware/vpxa.cfg saved as /etc/vmware/vpxa.cfg.rpmsave)
• Remember your vpx version from the first step and use it here to remove the vpx agent.
• rpm -e VMware-vpxa-2.5.0-104215
• Switch over to your Virtual Center client and remove the host you just modified (guest vms will remain)
• Reboot the host (vm’s will go down)
• After boot reconnect the host to VC and the latest vpx agent will be intstalled.
• Enable HA and the error should disappear.

Luckily my event occurred on a Sunday.  This was the first time that the guest vm’s experienced unplanned downtime without being able to vmotion in 3 years.  Be careful with those VMware patches!