ESXi 5.1 - Desktop board (GA-EP45T-UD3P)
I'm doing regular backups of my ESXi host by plugging a SATA hard drive into a removable drive bay (with host off), attaching the device under storage - devices, then mounting the datastore under storage - datastores. I then copy all the guest folders, unmount the datastore, detach the device, turn off the host and pull my backup drive out. The problem is that sometimes the host doesn't come back up properly (client login times out). I have always been able to get to the CLI (although the password prompt takes forever to appear) and sometimes another poweroff from CLI fixes the issue but this last backup I had to stop and restart the sfcbd-watchdog service before I could login.
I know that this backup process is not supported but I'm wondering if anyone has any insight as to what might be going on. Also, which log files would I look at to tell me exactly what the ESXi host was doing when this was happening.
TIA!