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bigusdadius
Contributor
Contributor

Adding Hosts to VC - Hostname or IP?

When adding ESX hosts to VC, what is recommended - hostname or IP? I've been using IPs at several sites with no issue, but I heard from a colleague that spoke to someone at VMware support that this will cause issues with DRS, HA, etc... and ESX hosts should be added to VC by hostname.

Any feedback will be greatly appreciated! Thank you.

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m_d_sella
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I can't officially vouch for whether or not adding by IP will cause a problem, but there are a few related caveats that may fall in to the same category. I have been adding all of my VI3 hosts using FQDN and have run into an issue with DRS/HA. Apparently, DRS and HA require name resolution for the host(s) shortname as well as the FQDN. In our scenario I had to add two entries for each host (one for shortname and one for FQDN) into the /etc/hosts file of each ESX server. This can be done more easily in DNS if available. After adding these and verifying that each host could resolve "servername" and "servernam.example.domain" our timeout issues with DRS and HA were resolved. I would think that as long as those entries are configured correctly, adding the host to VC by IP should be fine.

Hope This Helps,

Mike

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boydd
Champion
Champion

Usually I will add the hosts using the Host name (IP address is more likely to change than the hosts name).

DB

DB
VMKR9
Expert
Expert

Always use hostname, HA depends on name resolution to be perfect.

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VMKR9
Expert
Expert

When I said hostname I meant FQDN.

bigusdadius
Contributor
Contributor

I appreciate the feedback.

So, if an ESX host is entered into VC by IP, will a reverse lookup be performed to get the hostname and then a lookup to get the IP again?

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jketron
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Since the preferred method of setting the IP address for the ESX host is static I would use a FQDN and of course make sure that entry is in DNS.

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m_d_sella
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I did verify this afternoon that when you add a host using the IP, VC puts the IP in the "DNS Name" field in the VC database. I believe that this would indeed cause problems. Also, even after we added the hosts via FQDN, we still had to ensure short-name resolution to correct all of our issues.

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