Good day.
First of all, English is not my native language, second - I'm newbie in VMware, so please sorry if I won't be clear somewhere or somewhat.
Intro.
We have DMZ which is temporarily hosted on plain PC. DMZ is behind Cisco ASA 5510.
Config of host PC: Intel DH77EB mobo with integrated LAN, Core i7 3770, 4*8Gb DDR3 1600Mhz Kingston , 1*SSD 128Gb OCZ VERTEX3, 2*WD Caviar Blue SATA 500GB.
ESXi 5.5.0 (build 1993072) is installed on SSD, guests datastores placed on HDDs. (Placement of datastores is offtopic so please resist it.)
Guests OSes: 4*MS Server 2008 R2 (DC, Terminal Server, AVEVA customer service, TDMS and so on), 1*MS Win'XP (Filezilla FTP server), 1*FreeBSD for DNS server.
DMZ is occasionally used for distance working via RDP, for presentations on AVEVA portal, and so on, and is very light loaded.
The problem.
From time to time unsystematically I get freezes of console. It could happen two-three-four times at a run with 10-30secs interval, and could work with or without single freeze for decades of minutes. It could unfreeze quickly (about 5 secs), could not so quick (10-20 secs), could show me black screen with "Waiting for connection" inscription and could not unfreeze at all.
It could be console of any of Guests. If it's FreeBSD's console - I can't input text, if it's Win's console - it don't react to mouse clicks and keyboard strokes. When it unfreezes it works normally, without burst of reactions of collected inputs in buffer not in Win nor in FreeBSD.
If I open several consoles they don't freeze simultaneously, there could be one frozen and others are not, or could freeze all at once.
But if I open console and connect to that machine via RDP and then catch freeze, then freeze both console and RDP session. Unfreezes it also simultaneously.
While Guest's console and RDP is frozen, Guest responses to pings, even FTP on Win'XP works perfectly.
When console or consoles frozen, Vsphere Client works normally - shows and updates performance graphs (without anomalies), shows events log (without errors or warnings) and reacts instantly with no lags.
If when freeze begins I close console and immediately open it again, it opens instantly with no lags too.
What have I done.
1) I took other PC with the same config (mobo, CPU and RAM are the same) except SSD (Vertex4 120Gb) and HDDs (2*WD Black 500Gb). Installed ESXi 5.5.0 (build 1993072) from scratch on SSD, downloaded folders with Guests from buggy old Host and then uploaded them to the HDDs of the new one. Then I placed new Host side by side with old one, disconnected old one from LAN an used its patch-cord to connect new one to LAN. Freezes persist.
2) I replaced all patch-cords with other ones. Freezes persist.
3) ESXi host, ASA and outcoming link (used by WiFi hot-spots) were connected to switch Cisco SG300-10, so I replaced it with Cisco WS-C2960-48TS-L.Freezes persist.
My imagination is exhausted.
At the moment I'm waiting for new server hardware (all is monobrand - Supermicro) and planning to build new server for DMZ. It allows me to exclude this particular hardware with this particular ESXi build incompatibility. If it won't help, I'll make custom build Router+FW and then connect DMZ to it in order to bypass ASA.
I have no idea what to do else.
Maybe you have?