3i and userworld swap

[NHATech]

I'm in the process of replacing our ESX3.5 servers with ESX 3i servers that are much more capable, etc.

I have the new cluster created (the new hosts are AMD processor, while the old servers are Intel, so we are going to cold migrate the virtual machines once the new cluster is ready).

However when I try to get HA working I get an error that lead me to a KB that says you need to configure the hosts to a location where the scratch files can be written.

Now my understanding of these 3i servers is that they are diskless. So I pointed the scratchconfig to a directory on one of the attached SAN volumes.

But I still have errors. Perhaps I should not be pointing to a SAN volume for this?

[nick_couchman]

The SAN volume isn't the issue. I'm not sure I could really help with the information provided - could you dig a little deeper and see if there are any more detailed error messages? Also, sounds like you're using VirtualCenter if you're using HA.

[dpomeroy]

We are having issues getting HA to work with 3i (embedded). It seems that the setting changes (per the KB) only "stick" about 10% of the time. Set, reboot, set, reboot, eventually they will stick. We still have problems with HA and 3i after this point. I'll update this if we ever get anything usefull from VMware on this issue.

Don Pomeroy

VMware Communities User Moderator

[aav01]

As I understood userworld swap can be placed only on SAN LUN. It cannot work on NFS or iSCSI store.

I made a small hack to make it to work on PXE-booted ESXi (if it connected to SAN). Write me if you need in it.

[WillFulmer]

Any further update on this? Have a client with the same issue and ScratchConfig setting will not stick upon reboot.