A hosts management network interface somehow dropped off the network this afternoon. Fortunately I was still able to get in through iLO. It always pays to have an out-of-band interface active!

esxi-no-mgmt.png

From the DCUI screen, press Alt + F1. This will bring up the login screen. Log in as root then type esxcli network ip interface list. You will get an output similar to the one below.

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vmk2
    Name: vmk2
    MAC Address: 00:50:56:79:0c:de
    Enabled: true
    Portset: DvsPortset-0
    Portgroup: N/A
    VDS Name: dvSwitch-vMotion
    VDS UUID: 0c 7d 1a 50 93 7b 86 3f-76 f8 74 80 73 7c 3d 0f
    VDS Port: 101
    VDS Connection: 1952632411
    MTU: 1500
    TSO MSS: 65535
    Port ID: 33554436
vmk0
    Name: vmk0
    MAC Address: 00:1c:c4:bd:d6:ee
    Enabled: false
    Portset: DvsPortset-2
    Portgroup: N/A
    VDS Name: dvSwitch
    VDS UUID: 10 e1 1a 50 b1 22 19 a1-d4 33 10 dc 72 9a 92 db
    VDS Port: 151
    VDS Connection: 660732515
    MTU: 1500
    TSO MSS: 65535
    Port ID: 67108871

Fortunately mine was an easy issue to solve; vmk0 had Enabled: false. An easy fix: esxcli network ip interface set -i vmk0 -e true

After this I was able to reconnect to the host from within vCenter.