VMs in vCenter 6.0 not failover

[KevinXau]

Hi,

We've installed the Essential Plus license to both ESXi 6.0 host, and install vCenter 6.0 to the physical server. Both ESXi host is connected to the EMC storage via fiber, and we connect 2 network cable from these host to the switch as management traffic.

We've configured the vMotion so that all VMs on both host can be live migration. Beside, we also want to migrate all VMs to other host if one host is down. So we create HA.

- Test vMotion: right click VM, select live migration from host A to host B --> SUCCESSFUL

- Test HA: unplug network cable on host A, all the VMs on host A is not accessible, host A is down on the vCenter.

Any advice?

[RvdNieuwendijk]

The VMs on the ESXi host with the network cable unplugged don't failover to the other ESXi host because the host is still visible via datastore heartbeating. See for more information about datastore heartbeating https://ha.yellow-bricks.com/fundamental_concepts.html. You should unplug the fiber cables as well, or should power off the host.

[KevinXau]

Thanks for your information. I will test it on this Friday

[depping]

Actually, the VMs will only failover when you also have the Isolation response configured. Have you set it up to "power off"? If not, then a failover will not happen as the host will report the VMs as running through the datastore as described in my book which is linked above. So if you want a failover when a management network isolation occurs you need to configure this.